Table Discussion What did you put for your exit ticket? Is identity something you choose? Or is it something you are assigned?
Race and US History Purpose: To identify the key racial moments in America History up until after the Civil War.
1600’s 1619 1642 1661 1676 Virginia begins cultivating tobacco; S. Carolina rice and indigo, high demand for labor in colonies First record of Africans brought to Jamestown by Dutch, sold as indentured servants Massachusetts Colony legalizes slavery Virginia Colony legalizes slavery Bacon’s Rebellion causes decline of indentured servitude, switch to slavery
Servants versus slaves Indentured Servants Europeans (white) Owned by a plantation owner but only for a certain amount of years Once they were done they could be free and often times given some land or equipment Chose to become servants because of economic consequences Slaves Black and other non- whites Owned for life, early on, children were not slaves If they were freed were guaranteed nothing Forced into slavery
Bacon’s Rebellion Maybe the most important and underrated event in American Racial History!!! Black slaves and white servants fought side by side! This taugh
Southern Society (1850) “Slavocracy” [plantation owners] 6,000,000 The “Plain Folk” [white yeoman farmers] Black Freemen 250,000 Black Slaves 3,200,000 Total US Population 23,000,000 [9,250,000 in the South = 40%]
American Revolution and slavery
Changes in Cotton Production 1820 1860
Distribution of Slave Labor in 1850
Two Justifications of Slavery
Two Justification of Slavery Slaves were dehumanized, seen as property, racism became institutionalized The value of a young male slave by 1860 was roughly $20,000, the law and the economy clearly defined slaves as property, not humans The paternal view of slavery. Slaves were noble savages who were being domesticated and civilized by caring white slave owners This develops slavery into a social system
Southern Population
Economic dependence on slavery The South was primarily agrarian. Very slow development of industrialization. Rudimentary financial system. Inadequate transportation system. Again, 57% of US exports were Cotton
Slavery “entrenched” Fear of disrupting social order- society, rather nature, had developed life this way, who were we to disrupt it? But more importantly there was fear of blacks as they were viewed in such an inferior manner. What would happen if we let these “brutes” have freedom? Fear of destroying the South’s economy-The South was all in on cotton, it would take years to replace it with something else and the South did not trust the North to help with that