During the month of August, in the year 1619, a Dutch ship carrying twenty ‘ Negars’ landed in Jamestown, Virginia. These Africans had been stolen from their homes by slave traders who then traded them for food and other supplies. A year later the Pilgrims arrived at Plymouth Rock. These newly arrived Africans were made indentured servants. As such they were obligated to serve the planters or farmers who had traded for them for a given length of time, usually seven years. There were also Native American and White indentured servants
The role of the indentured servant in the early establishment of the colonies is very important as “the production and improvement of these properties depended on these workers.” (Ronald Takaki,
A Different Mirror
, p. 54)
During the seventeenth century, the great majority of the colonists were servants. While most came from England, many other came from Germany and Ireland.All were considered ‘outcasts’ in their societies. Not all White settlers came to the ‘New World’ voluntarily.
“English poor laws for the correction and punishment of rogues and idle people were enforced in Ireland, and this led to the wholesale kidnapping of young Irish women and men to supply the labor needs of the colonies.” (Ibid.)
Though oftentimes demeaning and difficult, the slave-like condition of the indentured servant held a glimmer of hope for there was the future promise of freedom, as well as the lure of prosperity and the possibility of improving their status in a new society.
Still, for many servants, life in the colonies became unbearable. Some opted to escape, only to be severely punished upon recapture. Blacks were especially disadvantaged. Unlike the Native Americans, they were unfamiliar with the surrounding countryside. Unlike the European indentured servants, their dark skin made them easy to find once they had escaped. In addition, their unfamiliarity with the language as well as the terms of indentured servitude meant that they could not read their English contracts. The English soon learned that it was easy to take advantage of their African servants. While an insubordinate White might have his service extended for several years, his Black counterpart often saw his term of service extended, requiring him to labor for ‘life’.
Whatever meager ‘promise’ the terms of indentured servitude might have held, for Black servants , this ‘promise’ soon faded.
“Some estate inventories showed that African laborers were more
valuable
than English Indentured servants, indicating that the former had a longer period of bound service.”
(Ibid., p. 56)
Long before slavery became institutionalized Black workers were being singled out and degraded. Sentenced to life-long service, they were regarded as property. They were in fact, slaves. And from the planter’s point of view, life-long servitude was certainly more cost efficient than the limited service of an indentured servant.
By 1650, the Black population in the colonies was still relatively small, numbering about three hundred, but as the century came to a close that number began to increase dramatically. In 1661 the Virginia Assembly passed a new law which legalized the use of Africans as slaves. This law said that a child born to a Black slave woman was to be a slave permanently. It made no difference if the child’s father was White or Native American. Several years later in 1705, a law in Virginia designated non-Christian servants imported into this country to be slaves, and as such, be bought and sold. Similar laws were passed in other colonies. By this time the majority of laborers brought to this country were African captives. It quickly became clear to merchants in both the North and South that there was a handsome profit to be made importing and selling Africans as slaves. The Institution of Slavery was off to a running start.
One can observe some elements of the short and long term repercussions inherent to this infamous turn of events in American history in the ambivalence expressed by Thomas Jefferson, who was himself an elite planter and owner of some 267 slaves.
“The whole commerce between master and slave is a perpetual exercise of the most boisterous passions, the most unremitting despotism on the one part, and degrading submissions on the other. Our children see this, and learn to imitate it; for man is an imitative animal. This quality is the germ of all education in him. From his cradle to his grave he is learning to do what he sees others do. If a parent could find no motive either in his philanthropy or his self love, for restraining the intemperance of passion towards a slave, it should always be a sufficient one that his child is present. But generally it is not sufficient. The parent storms, the child looks on, catches the lineaments of wrath, puts on the same airs in the circle of smaller slaves, gives a loose to his worse passions, and thus nursed, educated, and daily exercised in tyranny, cannot but be stamped by it with odious peculiarities. The man must be a prodigy who can retain his manner and morals undepraved by such circumstances.” (
Notes on the State of Virginia
, Thomas Jefferson, pp. 155, quoted by Ronald Takaki,
A Different Mirror
, p. 70)
Jefferson’s observation of the daunting effect that the institution of slavery had on all involved was undeniably true. The justifications, rationalizations, and class designations that were employed to defend slavery created an insidious manifestation of racism and classism that remains with us today. Although slavery has long been abolished, many of the stereotypes, negative attributes as well as political obstacles used to insure the survival of that institution, survive. They have determined the nature of the stories told about African Americans in literature, visual depiction, film and all aspects of the media. These same attitudes have been responsible for the structuring of institutions that have historically denied African Americans access to the resources needed to tell their stories and have them heard.
For further information about slavery in the United States consult the following resources:
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* Gerald Early, Editor.
Lure and Loathing
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* Ellwood Parry,
The Images of the Indian and the Black Man in American Art
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* Ronald Takaki,
A Different Mirror
-
* Caroly Kott Washburne,
A Multicultural Portrait of Colonial Life
-
* Harris, Middleton.
The Black Book
-
* Lerrone Bennett, JR.,
Before the Mayflower
-
* Ella Shohat / Robert Stam,
Unthinking Eurocentrism
-
* Bell Irvin Wiley,
Southern Negroes
, 1861-1865
To attain a more poignant and personal view of how slavery was experienced by Americans, White and Black alike, I strongly recommend that selections from the following material be included in further activities. Most of the stories and personal accounts are suitable for student reading. I have indicated some that I feel would work especially well in this unit.
-
* Belinda Hermence,
Before Freedom, 48 Histories of Former North and South Carolina Slaves
-
* William J. Faulkner,
The Days When the Animals Talked
,
Black American Folktales and
How They Came To Be
-
* Virginia Hamilton,
The People Could Fly
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* Virginia Hamilton,
Many Thousand Gone
,
African Americans From Slavery to Freedom