Slavery in 1619 (a Year

Slavery

In 1619 (a year before the Mayflower landed in Massachusetts) more than 20 black people from Africa sailed into Chesapeake Bay in Virginia and were traded to the colony's authorities by their captain in exchange for supplies he needed for the ship. They are often thought to be the first slaves in North America, but actually, African people were working in St. Augustine, Florida in the early 1500s. These Spanish-speaking Africans built houses, shops, and other buildings, planted gardens, and fished. Some sold fish in the local market. Others were paid as drummers, fifers, and flag bearers in the local militia. They were typical of early black population, which were a mixture of enslaved and free.

Forces worldwide, however, were combining to cause the emergence of a gigantic slave-trade industry. For one thing, Martin Luther rebelled against the Catholic Church for religious reasons and founded the Protestant movement. Eventually, the movement was known as the Protestant Reformation. The Catholic Church was an economic force and politically powerful. Countries that remained Catholic (i.e. Spain, Portugal, and France) were in direct competition with Protestant countries (i.e. England and Holland) for control over foreign resources -- resources such as gold, silver, furs, fish, timber, tobacco, sugar and rice that would bring wealth to their countries. Financed by governments, each side raced to establish colonies in the New World. To settle the colonies and build industries required labor and this created the need for slaves to do the work.

From 1600 to 1670, slave status varied in English colonies. This was also true in Dutch colonies like New Amsterdam (now New York). Some Afro-Dutch workers had "half-freedom," for instance. Others were freed by their former owners and owned land of their own. They were also allowed to use the courts to settle disputes. In Rhode Island, a law was passed to limit the length of involuntary servitude. Moreover, at first, slaves had some chance of gaining their freedom in North America because English Christians believed in enslaving only those people who were "heathens" (or non-Christians). Religious status was more important than race to the early English colonists. But the first shipload of Slaves who came directly from Africa arrived on the Hudson River in 1655. After that, the Protestant "mission" to convert non-Europeans to Christianity became less and less important, and gradually color became the significant factor in determining who was to be a slave. The "terrible transformation" had begun.

After 1670 English settlers from Barbados brought slaves to the Carolinas and with them came a legal code that led to institutionalized slavery. They also brought a social system that approved of enslaving black people. Slave trading became more and more profitable as the market for humans grew. As the colonies grew richer on the system, they could afford to buy more and more slaves. There was further incentive for this because settlers were given free land in the colonies if they would come and work it. For each slave, they got an extra parcel.

As this was happening, it became illegal for slaves to get out by way of Christian conversion. Once religion was removed as a factor, race determined who could be made a slave. Slaves were no longer "heathen people" but were now "black people," and their owners no longer called themselves "Christians" but were now "white people." It was only a small step to claiming that blacks should be enslaved. "Those who wrote the colonial laws not only moved to make slavery racial; they also made it hereditary" (Kelley & Lewis, 2000, p. 68). The law now said children of slave mothers were to be slaves forever.

Other repressive laws prohibited blacks from earning money. They were not allowed to go about freely or to gather in groups, go to school, marry whites, carry a gun, resist punishment, or go to court. In Virginia, all the various laws were condensed into a unified "Slave Code" in 1705. Soon other colonies did the same. These laws produced racism as an integral aspect of American society, and after 1700 racism was central to American culture. Thus the system, driven by profit, became acceptable to Christians and was supported by the law.

Africans did every kind of work imaginable, particularly if it was dirty or dangerous. They also brought skills with them from Africa that were put to use -- such as growing rice. The kind of work a slave did depended on where he/she ended up. In the Chesapeake region, for instance, Africans cut and burned brush, split rails, and built fences with axes and hatchets. They cut down trees and squared logs. They were wheelwrights, carpenters, shingle cutters, boat builders, cabinetmakers, and barrel makers. They built wagons, worked as blacksmiths, made saddles and harnesses. In South Carolina they built dugout canoes and boats that carried rice to Charleston. A law there required all slaves to work as ditch diggers when the growing season was over. Slaves built roads and dug waterways. In North Carolina slaves made tar and pitch from pinecones for use on English boats. In Georgia, black slaves wove fishing nets and were shrimpers. In Africa they had killed and eaten crocodiles, so they knew how to deal with alligators in the South. The women worked in the fields and as house servants. They cared for and nursed white children. They did the gardening, cooking, cleaning, washing, mending and all the minutiae of housekeeping.

2. "Why am I a slave? I will run away. I will not stand it. Get caught or get clear. I'll try it.... I have only one life to lose. I had as well be killed running as die standing....It cannot be that I shall live and die a slave." The famous ex-slave Frederick Douglas wrote of thinking this, and probably this was the reasoning of many slaves, whether they tried to run away or not. Running away was an overt and extreme form of resistance. Most slaves who tried to run got caught, and the punishment was severe, sometimes even death.

Most resistance was limited to resistance against the worst, most unendurable aspects of slavery but didn't result in freedom. Frederick Douglas, for instance, resisted slavery by refusing to be whipped. His master, Covey, called other slaves to help, but Douglas fought them all off and won. He wasn't beaten again. Resisting helped the slave to feel he had some control over himself, that he was not a perpetual helpless victim but a human being. Some slaves stole food because they were not given enough to eat. Women sometimes kicked and clawed their sexual abusers. "Besides stealing, they burned gin houses, barns, corncribs, and smokehouses. Some slaves used poison or physical force to kill their masters"(Kelley & Lewis, 2000, p. 193).