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Name______________________________________________Date__________________Block________African American History Unit 3 Packet: British North AmericaLocation and tribes of Africans imported into British North AmericaPercentages Senegambia?(Mandinka,?Fula,?Wolof)14.5Sierra Leone?(Mende,?Temne)15.8Windward Coast?(Mandé,?Kru)5.2Gold Coast?(Akan,?Fon)13.1Bight of Benin?(Yoruba,?Ewe,?Fon,?Allada?and?Mahi)4.3Bight of Biafra?(Igbo,?Tikar,?Ibibio,?Bamileke,?Bubi)24.4West-central Africa?(Kongo,?N. Mbundu,?S. Mbundu)26.1Southeast Africa?(Macua,?Malagasy)1.8Africans & Indentured ServitudeBy the early months of 1619, there were thirty-two people of African descent—fifteen men and seventeen women—living in the British colony of Jamestown (present-day Virginia). Nothing is known concerning when they arrived or from where they had come. The following year a Dutch warship, carrying seventeen African men and three African women from Angola, landed at Hampton Roads at the mouth of the James River. The Dutch warship had attacked a Portuguese slaver, taken most of its human cargo, and brought these twenty Angolans to Virginia. 3683027305The British, following the Spanish example, called them negroes, meaning black in Spanish. These Angolans became servants to the Jamestown officials and farmers. Like the Spanish and Portuguese, the British were Europeans who believed they were superior to people of African descent. But the British people were conflicted; the Angolans were Christians and according to British custom, Christians should not be enslaved. A drawing of Fort Monroe, Virginia, where the first Africans arrived in British North America The British leaders chose to treat the Africans as indentured servants. In England, parents indentured—or, in other words, apprenticed—their children to “masters,” who controlled the children’s lives and had the right to the children’s labor for a set number of years. In return, the masters supported the children and taught them a trade or profession. After the set number of years was over, the child was free and he or she had gained professional skills. When British people moved to North America, the concept of indentured servitude evolved. Many lower class adults in Britain wanted the chance to go to North America and take a chance at earning a good living, but most could not afford the cost of the boat ride. As a solution, an adult in Britain could become an indentured servant in North America by agreeing to sell two to seven years of his or her freedom in return for the cost of a trip to North America. By agreeing to work for a certain number of years for a wealthier person, they could have the opportunity to become successful farmers once their debts were paid.When Africans first arrived in Virginia and Maryland, they entered into similar contracts, agreeing to work for their masters until the proceeds of their labor recouped the cost of their purchase. Such independent servitude was harsh in the tobacco colonies because masters sought to get as much labor as they could from their servants before the indenture ended. Most indentured servants—black people as well as white people—died from overwork or disease before regaining their freedom. But those who survived could expect eventually to leave their masters and seek their fortunes as free people. Anthony Johnson was one of the African Americans who earned his freedom after his indentured servitude. He arrived at Jamestown in 1621 from England, but his original home may have been Angola. On the plantation, he was one of four out of fifty-six who survived his indentured servitude in Virginia. In 1635, Johnson’s master, Nathaniel Littleton, released him from further service, and the Virginia government gave him a 250-acre plantation; Johnson became the master of five indentured servants, both white and black. 1) What 3 parts of African did most of the enslaved and indentured servants come from? 2) What is the first year that historians have records of Africans living in the British colonies?36195342903) Read the advertisement to the left: What country are the indentured servants from? What is the owner willing to trade them for?4) If you were a low-income white Briton (British person), would you consider becoming an indentured servant? Why or why not?5) How does Anthony Johnson’s life reflect upward social mobility? (social mobility = moving from working class to middle class or upper class) 3512185187325Race and the Origins of Black SlaveryBetween 1640 and 1700, the British tobacco-producing colonies from Delaware to North Carolina underwent a demographic revolution. (The term demographic refers to the characteristics of a group of people such as race, religion, age, or sex). In British North America, an economy based primarily on the labor of white indentured servants shifted to become an economy based on the labor of black slaves. Three major reasons explain why British leaders shifted from white indentured servants to black slaves. First, the Spanish and the Portuguese leaders set a precedent (something that happened first or before) for enslaving Africans. Also, over the years fewer British men and women were willing to indenture themselves in return for passage to North America. Lastly, British control of the Atlantic slave trade made African slaves more accessible and cheaper for the colonies. In addition, race played the crucial role in shaping the character of slavery in the British colonies. From the first arrival of Africans in Chesapeake Virginia and Maryland, the British leaders made decisions that qualified (to modify or limit) the freedoms of Africans. The British historically made distinctions between how they treated each other and how they treated those who were physically and culturally different from them. Such discriminations had been the basis of their colonial policies toward the Irish, whom the British had been trying to conquer for centuries as well as the American Indians. Because they considered Africans even more different from themselves than either the Irish or the Indians, the English assumed from the beginning that Africans were generally inferior to themselves. 6) Use the reading to complete the chart:What do the 3 pie charts above indicate (show)? What were the 3 reasons from the reading explain why this happened?1)2)3)Divide & Conquer: From Racism to Bacon’s RebellionWhen Africans first arrived in the Chesapeake during the early seventeenth century, they interacted culturally and sexually with white indentured servants and with American Indians. This mixing of peoples changed all three groups. Interracial relationships—miscegenation—produced people of mixed race. Black people and white people worked on the plantations together, lived together, and slept together. As members of an oppressed working class, they were all indentured servants. British leaders banned such interracial marriages mainly to prevent white women from bearing mulatto children. The leaders feared that having free white mothers might allow persons of mixed race to sue and gain their freedom, thereby creating a legally recognized mixed-race class like in Latin America. Such a class, wealthy white people feared, would blur the distinction between the dominant and subordinate races and weaken white supremacy. Although black and white servants residing in Virginia during the early seventeenth century had much in common, their masters immediately made distinctions between them based on race. Although they made up a relatively small number of servants, African women worked outside in the fields of the plantations with the male servants, whereas most white women were assigned domestic (household) duties. Also, unlike white servants, black servants usually did not have surnames (family names), and early census reports listed them separately from whites. By the 1640s, black people could not have guns or become Christians. A key event that affected slavery in British North America was a rebellion led by Nathaniel Bacon in 1676. Bacon was an British aristocrat who had recently migrated to Virginia. Like many other immigrants and former indentured servants, he bought land for farming. Bacon and other farmers were outraged when American Indians attacked them, killing many settlers. The Indians believed the land was theirs, and that the new settlers were invaders threatening the Indian way of life. The settlers demanded that the British government protect them, but the Virginia government picked their battles with the Indians cautiously, preferring to negotiate with the Indian tribes rather than fight them all. Nathaniel Bacon created an army of 500 white and black indentured servants who were united in frustration at the government’s failure to protect them. They marched to Jamestown, the capital of Virginia, and they burned it down. The rebellion lasted three months before Bacon died of disease and the rebellion was crushed. The uprising convinced the colony’s elite that continuing to rely on white agricultural laborers, who could become free and get guns, was dangerous. By switching from indentured white servants to an enslaved black labor force that would never become free or control firearms, the planters hoped to avoid class conflict among white people. Increasingly thereafter, white Americans perceived that both their freedom from class conflict and their prosperity rested on denying freedom to black Americans. 7) Why did British leaders ban miscegenation? In your opinion, did this prevent people from miscegenation? Why or why not?8) Why do you think the British made laws that forbade black people from becoming Christians and carrying guns? 9) How did Bacon’s Rebellion affect the white British leaders?10) If you were a British colonist in Virginia in 1676, would you have supported Bacon’s Rebellion? Create a poster to hold during a rally in support or against the rebellion. Include a picture and a slogan.Peter, a man who was enslaved in?Baton Rouge, Louisiana, 1863, whose scars were the result of violent abuse from a plantation overseer.518668010795A Day in the LifeWhat was life like for enslaved African Americans in the British colonies? Regardless of where slaves resided they could be expected to work from sunup to sundown each day with only a short lunch break. They worked six days a week and had Sundays off. Slave owners punished the slaves who disobeyed or refused to work through whipping, branding, cutting off ears, castration (for males), and murder. Yet, the lives of most enslaved people differed depending on which region they resided in: the northern colonies, tobacco colonies, or the low country colonies.Northern Colonies The Northern colonies included New Hampshire, Vermont, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Connecticut, New York, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania. Here, the weather was too cold for southern plantation crops, so slaves worked on small family farms. Slaves usually lived in their master’s house and they worked side-by-side with their master and one or two slaves. In the cities, slaves worked as artisans (someone who makes things), shopkeepers, messengers, and domestic servants. White Europeans greatly outnumbered enslaved African Americans in the northern colonies. 50,000 African Americans lived in the northern colonies in 1770, which was only 4.5% of the total population. Northern white people did not fear enslaved African Americans as much as southern white people. As a result, enslaved African Americans had more freedom to travel to other slaves’ homes. At the same time, however, enslaved African Americans had fewer opportunities to preserve African culture because they were often isolated from large groups of African Americans.28536908255Tobacco ColoniesEnslaved African Americans processing tobacco in 17th century (1600s) VirginiaBetween 1700 and 1770, 80,000 Africans arrived in the tobacco colonies, and even more African Americans were born into slavery there. The American Indians grew tobacco and smoked it to induce hallucinations during religious ceremonies. Europeans learned how to grow tobacco from the Indians and then sold it people back in Europe for recreational smoking, making enormous profits. Tobacco planting spread from Virginia and Maryland to Delaware and North Carolina and from the coastal plain to the foothills of the Appalachian Mountains. By 1750, 145,000 slaves lived in Virginia and Maryland, accounting for 61% of all the slaves in British North America. Unlike the sugar colonies of the Caribbean, where whites were a tiny minority, whites remained a majority in the tobacco colonies. Most southern whites did not own slaves; nevertheless, the economic development of the region depended on enslaved black laborers. The conditions under which those laborers lived varied. Most slaveholders farmed small tracts of land and owned fewer than five slaves. These masters and their slaves worked together and at times developed close personal relationships. Other masters owned thousands of acres of land and rarely saw most of their slaves. During the early 18th century, the great planters divided their slaves among several small holdings. They did this to avoid concentrating potentially rebellious enslaved people in one area. Nearly all slaves—both men and women—worked as farmers in the fields. On the smaller farms, they worked with their master. On larger estates, they worked for an overseer, who was usually white. New African men regarded field labor as women’s work and tried to avoid it if possible. Not until after 1750 did some black men begin to hold such skilled occupations on plantations as carpenters, blacksmiths (creates from iron and steel), carters (a person who hauls goods in a cart), coopers (someone who makes barrels), millers (someone who grinds cereal crops to make flour), sawyers (someone who saws wood), tanners (someone who creates leather from animal skins), and shoemakers. Black women had less access to such occupations; when they did not work in the fields, women were domestic servants in the homes of their masters. Here, they cooked, washed, cleaned, and cared for the master’s children. Such duties could be extremely taxing, because, unlike fieldwork, they did not end when the sun went down. 11) How was slavery similar in every colony?12) How did the climate affect the growth of slavery in the North? How were the northern colonies an advantage and a disadvantage for enslaved African Americans?13) What crop did planters in Virginia and Maryland grow? 14) How did slave owners try to prevent rebellion on their plantations?Low Country Colonies635968375South of the tobacco colonies were the low country colonies of South Carolina and Georgia. 40,000 slaves lived in the rice-producing regions of South Carolina and Georgia, accounting for 17% of the total enslaved population. Here, a distinctive slave society developed as the region’s subtropical climate discouraged white settlement and encouraged dependence on black labor. During the early years of settlement, nearly one-third of the immigrants were African, most of them males. By the early eighteenth century, more Africans were arriving than white people. Planters grew rice as the staple crop instead of tobacco. Rice had been grown in West Africa for thousands of years, and many of the enslaved Africans who reached the low country had the skills required to cultivate it in America. The Old Plantation painting depicting enslaved African Americans during a festival on a South Carolina plantationDuring the 1750s, rice cultivation and slavery spread into Georgia’s coastal plain. By 1773, Georgia had as many black people—15,000—as white people. Absentee plantation owners became the rule in South Carolina and Georgia because planters preferred to live in cities like Charleston or Savannah where sea breezes provided relief from the heat. Enslaved Africans on low-country plantations suffered from a high mortality rate from diseases, overwork, and poor treatment just as other slaves in the Caribbean. Therefore, unlike the slave population in the Chesapeake colonies, the slave population in the low country did not grow by reproducing itself—rather it grew through continued arrivals of New Africans. This low country slave society produced striking paradoxes in race relations during the 18th century (1700s). As the region’s black population grew, white people became increasingly fearful of revolt, and by 1698 Carolina had the strictest slave code in North America. White South Carolinians organized a “Negro watch” to enforce a curfew on its black population, and watchmen could shoot Africans and African Americans on sight. Black people in Carolina faced the quandary of being both feared and needed by white people. Even as persons of European descent grew fearful of black revolt, the colony in 1704 authorized the arming of enslaved black men when needed for defense against Indian and Spanish raids. Slaves who lived in the low-country retained considerable autonomy (power/independence) in their daily routines. The intense cultivation required to produce rice encouraged the evolution of a “task system” of labor on the low-country plantations. Rather than working in gangs as in the tobacco colonies, slaves on rice plantations had daily tasks. When they completed these tasks, they could work on plots of land assigned to them or do what they pleased without white supervision. Because black people were the great majority in the low-country plantations, they also preserved more of their African heritage than did black people who lived in the region’s cities or in the more northerly British mainland colonies. 15) Choose six details about life of the enslaved in the low country colonies. Create a cartoon to illustrate their lives:British Colonies BrochureDirections: Create an informative brochure about the 3 different regions where enslaved African Americans resided: Northern Colonies, Tobacco Colonies, and Low Country Colonies. In your brochure, include the following information:Front Page: 1) Name and TitleInside Pages:2) Draw a map of the colonies that were included in each region3) What kind of work did they do?4) How much independence did they have?5) How well did they preserve (maintain) African culture?Last Page: 6) From the three regions, which was the most positive environment for enslaved African Americans to be living and working in? Create arguments for why a certain colony was the best option and why the other two regions were worse options. Explain your argument in at least five sentences.African American FamiliesAs the second generations of African slaves grew up in British North America they transformed their cultures. Historians long believed that in this process the creoles lost their African heritage. But scholars have found many African legacies not only in African American culture but in American culture in general. The second generation of people of African descent did lose their parents’ native languages and their ethnic identity as Igbos, Angolas, or Senegambians. But they retained a generalized West African heritage and passed it on to their descendents. Among the major elements of that heritage were family structure and notions of kinship (family), religious concepts and practices, African words and modes of expression, musical style and instruments, cooking methods and foods, folk literature, and folk arts. The preservation of the West African extended family was the basis of African American culture. Even during the middle passage, enslaved Africans created fictive kin (family) relationships for mutual support, and in dire circumstances, African Americans continued to improvise family structures. By the mid-1700s, however, extended black families based on biological relationships were prevalent. These extended families were rooted in Africa, but were also a result of—and a reaction to—slavery. West African incest taboos encouraged slaves to pick mates who lived on different plantations from their own. The choice of marrying slaves away from their immediate families also tended to extend families over wide areas. Once established, such far-flung kinship relationships made it easier for others, who were forced to leave home, to adapt to new conditions under a new master.Extended families influenced African American naming practices, which reinforced family ties. Africans named male children after close relatives. This custom survived in America because boys were more likely to be separated from their parents by being sold than girls were. Having one’s father’s or grandfather’s name preserved the family identity. In the 18th century, as more African Americans began to use surnames (family names), they clung to the name of their original master. This reflected a West African predisposition to link a family name with a certain location. Like taking a parent’s name, it helped maintain family relationships despite repeated scatterings. Bible names became popular among African Americans in the mid 1700s. This was because masters often refused to allow their slaves to be converted to Christianity. As a result, African religions—both indigenous and Islamic—persisted in parts of America. The animism of West Africa maintained a premodern perception of the unity of the natural and the supernatural, the secular and the sacred, and the living and the dead. Black Americans continued to perform African circle dance known as the “ring shout” at funerals, and they decorated graves with shells and pottery in the West African manner. They also often remained in daily contact with their ancestors through spirit possession. Even when many African Americans began to convert to Christianity during the mid 1700s, West African religious thought and practice shaped their lives. Slave Life in Early AmericaLittle evidence survives of the everyday lives of enslaved Africans and African Americans in colonial North America. This is because they, along with Indians and most white people of that era, were poor. They had few possessions, lived in flimsy housing, and kept no records. Yet recent studies provide a glimpse of their material culture.At first, slave dress was minimal during summer. Men wore breechcloths, women wore skirts, leaving their upper bodies bare, and children went naked until puberty. Later men wore shirts, trousers, and hats while working in the fields. Women wore simple dresses and covered their heads with handkerchiefs. In winter, masters provided more substantial cotton and woolen clothing and cheap leather shoes. Slave women brightened clothing with dyes made form bark, decorated clothing with ornaments, and created African-style headwraps, hats, and hairstyles. In this manner, African Americans retained a sense of personal style compatible with West African culture.Food consisted of corn, yams, salt pork, and occasionally salt beef and salt fish. Slaves also caught fish and raised chickens and rabbits. When farmers in the Chesapeake began planting wheat, slaves baked biscuits. In the South Carolina low country, rice became an important part of African-American diets. During colonial times, slaves occasionally supplemented this diet with vegetables that they raised in their own gardens. Music & Folk TalesMusic was an essential part of West African life and it remained so among African Americans. Call-and-response style of singing with an emphasis on improvisation, complex rhythms, and strong beat. Slave masters banned drums and horns because slaves used them for long distance communication. African Americans continued to use the African instrument mbanza in America (banjo). African Americans learned to play the violin and guitar with African musical traditions.African tales, proverbs, and riddles that entertained, instructed, and united African Americans. African Americans used tales of how weak animals outsmarted stronger animals to show the ability of slaves to outsmart and ridicule their masters Example: “Brer Fox Catches Old Man Tarrypin”Black Resistance and RebellionThe Great Awakening! White preachers challenged predetermination by arguing that people could reach heaven by doing good works during their lives. They appealed to the poor of all races and taught spiritual equality. Preachers emphasized the possibility to be reborn as a Christian. The preachers introduced singing, movement, and emotion to their servicesThe Great Awakening was significant for African American history because white leaders began to reach out to free and enslaved African Americans to convert them to Christianity. The white preachers’ style of emotional preaching resembled spirit possession in West African ancestor worship. Baptism in rivers paralleled West African water traditions. Baptist, Methodist, and Presbyterian churches welcomed black people. Members addressed each other as brother and sister. Black men were ordained as ministers and preached to white congregations (often while they were enslaved). They influenced white people’s perceptions of how services should be conducted. It was still a white world where blacks and whites sat separately. Slave masters tried to use Christianity to instill humility and obedience in their slaves.African Americans established their own churches when possible. Dancing, shouting, clapping, and singing became characteristic of these places of worship. African Americans retained the West African assumption that the souls of the dead return to their homeland and rejoin their ancestors. The Black church reinforced a collective identity and helped them persevere in slavery. They also maintained the Ring Shout, a West African dance where the worshippers represent the connection between past, present, and future.African American Resistance and Rebellion in the British ColoniesAmerican slavery relied on physical force to deny freedom to African Americans, yet the enslaved resisted continuously. Newly arrived African men and women were most open in refusing to work and often could not be persuaded by punishment to change their behavior. Here are some ways African Americans resisted slave work:Goldbricking: When slaves avoided assigned work. Masters tried to make slaves work harder and faster, while the slaves sought to conserve their energy, take breaks, and socialize with each otherSabotage: broke tools, burned the barns, destroyed crops, poisoned master, stole from masterEscape: Africans tended to escape in groups of individuals who shared a common homeland and language. When they escaped they had the following options:1) Outliers: Escaped slaves that lived near their former master and stole from his plantation.2) Joined Seminole IndiansSeminole Indians welcomed African Americans from who escaped slavery. Most African Americans who joined the Seminole were full members of the Indian group. 3) Maroon Settlements: some escaped slaves created independent colonies in FloridaFort Mose (pronounced Mo-sey): Fort Mose was the most famous maroon settlement. 100 African Americans lived at Fort Mose and the purpose was to give sanctuary to Africans escaping enslavement in Georgia. This community drew on a range of African backgrounds blended with Spanish, Native American and English cultural traditions.? 4) Some used their knowledge of American society to try to pass as free African AmericansRebellion:New York City Rebellion (1712): 27 African Americans set fire to a building. When white men arrived to put out the fire, the rebels attacked them with muskets, hatchets, and swords. They killed 9 and wounded 6. A local militia captured the rebels, 6 of whom killed themselves. The other 21 were executed. New York City Rebellion (1741): Another rebellion was prevented and 34 people were executed (30 Black, 4 white)Stono Rebellion (1739) (outside Charleston, South Carolina): A slave named Jemmy led 20 slaves in a rebellion. They broke into a warehouse, killed the guards, and stole guns and ammunition. Other slaves joined them until they had 100 rebels. As they moved south, they destroyed plantations and murdered 30 white people. When they stopped to celebrate their victories and beat drums to attract other slaves, a white militia on horseback attacked and killed 44 of them. White leaders arrested 150 slaves and hanged 10 daily to send a message. ................
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