Slavery By: Terina Wisdom

The video about slavery.

When did it start. The early 17 th century, European settlers in North American turned to African slaves as a cheaper, more plentiful labor source than indentured servants. After the 1619 a Dutch ship brought 20 Africans ashore at the British colony of Jamestown, Virginia. In the 17 th and 18 th centuries, black slaves worked mainly on tobacco, rice, and indigo plantation on the southern cost. After the American Revolution many colonists began to link the oppression of black slaves to their own oppression by the British, and to call for slavery’s abolition. After the war’s end, the new U.S. Constitution tacitly acknowledged the institution, counting each slave as three- fifths of a person for the purpose of taxation and representation in Congress and guaranteeing the right to repossess any “’ person held to service or labor.”’

The auction of slavery. The town would get together and they would have the slaves be in stoles or houses or pens so people could look at them before buying them. When it was time to seal them off they would stand on the podium and wait for people to buy them. If the slave was to old they would sometimes set them free and let them figure it out.

The weapons that they used. The most common one was the wipe. They would use leather or make strains of the rope and tie them together so it would be a tight hit. They would use belt buckle also when they get out of line.

The binding of transportation. They would use rope to tie them up together in links. They would put branches by there necks and tie them to it so they would be together and none of them would escaped. Then they would put metaled changes around the arms and feet and linked together in rows. They would take them on ships in big groups. Some of them would fall over board and die or some would get out of line and either get killed or they got sick or a disease and died. They would take a 600 or a few mile walk to were the boats were waiting from them. Some couldn’t handle the weather or the rocking of the ship some of the slaves died that way to.

Most slaves lived in farms or small plantations. Most of the masters owned less then 50 slaves. They would have a family and get married. Were they lived.

What were there jobs. The slaves jobs were to pick cotton, tobacco picking and rice picking. Most of the women would do was house work, raise their children and there masters children ( if they had any), they would do cooking, laundry, depending on were they live they would all so do farming with the men and boys.

How slave escaped. Some would run way in the night so no one could see them. They would follow the Big Dipper – that was a story told among the slaves that if you follow the Big Dipper pointing north you would find your way out, you could only do this at night- some slaves would get caught and sold again or their masters would put up a missing sign for them so they are returned. Some would be old enough to join the army to help other people. Then the slaves would hop on wagons and hide from the people so they could traveled out of the place that they were in. In some cases some weren’t lucky and they got beaten, killed either by burning, hung or getting beaten to death. Most of the master didn’t do the killing or the beating they had other people do it for them. In some cases the masters would let them go either, they were nice or they got to old or even to sick they would just kill them because there was no cure for sick black slaves.

Ending of slavery. The 13 th Amendment, adopted late in 1865, officially abolished slavery, but freed black’s status in the post-war South remained precarious, and significantly challenges awaited during the Reconstruction period ( ). Former slaves received the rights of citizenship and the “’ equal protection”’ of the Constitution in the 14 th Amendment (1868) and the right to vote in the 15 th (1870). The Constitution were often violated or ignored, it was difficult for former slaves to gain a foothold in the post-war economy. Reconstruction was ultimately frustrating for African Americans, and the rebirth of white supremacy- there was a rise in the Ku Klux Klan- had triumphed in the South by Almost a century later resistance to the lingering racism and discrimination in America that began during the slavery era would lead to the civil rights movement of the 1960s.