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Blacks in antebellum America were far from monolithic, in their personal identities or in their cultural and political status. For example, F&H point out that even among the free blacks in free states, there would be significant differences in levels of status, wealth, and power. Some had significant savings and real estate holdings not dissimilar from their white counterparts, whereas others held positions of low status such as domestic servants. Moreover, racism continued to permeate northern white society and blacks still were disallowed from participating in the political process. Yet as Parker’s Sankofa, we meet people like Shango, who represents the ways blacks and slaves subverted the systemic racism via the accumulation of specialized skills. The historical record reveals three main categories of African-American status during the antebellum period: free blacks in free states, enslaved blacks in Southern/slave states, and free blacks in Southern/slave states. Of these three, I would personally prefer being a free black in a free/Northern state for the main reason being that I could potentially wield more power given my privileged position.
F&H do discuss the ways free blacks in New York...
Although these situations were relatively rare, they showed that there was at least the potential to participate more fully in American society via starting businesses or participating in the community. I believe that by empowering my own community, and giving back to the blacks who still struggled, that I would be able to make a difference. If I were a free black in the South, even if I were like Shango or Frederick Douglass who made a clear difference through his writings, I would still be restricted legally by my status. I would also continually fear for my life. Ironically, though, the film 12 Years a Slave also showed that it was possible for a free black in New York to be bereft of his freedom, shackled and imprisoned on the sole basis of his skin color. Without idealizing life in the North, I would nevertheless prefer to be a free black in the North because there would be greater opportunities for my children and myself.
After all, even Shango and similarly highly skilled free and enslaved blacks in the South were continually at the mercy of not just their…
References
F&H
Library of Congress (2017). The African American Odyssey: A Quest for Full Citizenship. Retrieved online: https://www.loc.gov/exhibits/african-american-odyssey/free-blacks-in-the-antebellum-period.html
Parker
7). Du Bois also points out that the so-called "slave codes" like the Black Codes of the Reconstruction period after the Civil War were written to enforce the notion that slaves "were not considered as men. They had no right to petition. They were devisable like any other chattel. They could own nothing. They could not legally marry, nor could they control their children. They could be imprisoned by their
Notwithstanding its roots in African dance, in actuality, it was a fighting style designed by African slaves as a means of protecting themselves from government agents searching for them after their escape from enslavement. Likewise, Levine focuses heavily on the connection between the slave culture that was evident in the American South, while much of it may actually have been shaped by the need to conceal it from white
Antebellum America The Continental Setting In 1815, the United States still had most of the characteristics of an underdeveloped of Third World society, although most of the world was in the same condition at that time. Its population was about 8.5 million, about triple that of 1776, but over 95% was still rural and agrarian. As late as 1860, over 80% were overall, but by then industrialization and urbanization were well underway
Slave Narrative and Black Autobiography - Richard Wright's "Black Boy" and James Weldon Johnson's Autobiography The slave narrative maintains a unique station in modern literature. Unlike any other body of literature, it provides us with a first-hand account of institutional racially-motivated human bondage in an ostensibly democratic society. As a reflection on the author, these narratives were the first expression of humanity by a group of people in a society where
Politics makes strange bedfellows, we are told, with the implication that those brought together by the vagaries of politics would be best kept apart. But sometimes this is not true at all. In the case of the Black Seminoles, politics brought slaves and Seminole Indians politics brought together two groups of people who would - had the history of the South been written just a little bit differently - would
Therefore, the certificate was the black's ultimate proof, and without it, they could never hope to live a peaceful and fulfilled life, and although the purpose of the certificates was to ensure that the blacks could move about freely, it had the opposite effect, and this was that they were more often arrested if they ventured to travel outside of their county. When they set up shops, they found