AP African American Studies �Unit 2 Lecture: �Freedom, Enslavement, and Resistance

Evelyne Laurent-Perrault, Ph.D.

University of California, Santa Barbara

MAIN OBJECTIVES

• Acknowledge and Trace Dialectic of Enslavement and Freedom
• Emergence of an African Diaspora’s Political Imaginary and Epistemology
• Offer tools 🡺 heal from the Trans-Atlantic Trade in African Individuals (Humanity’s Historical Trauma)

Recap of Unit 1:�Africans and Europeans in Antiquity

�

Mediterranean World, 1695

https://www.pinterest.com/pin/387098530454848787/

Perceptions of Africans in Antiquity

• Egypt/Nubia and the Greco-Roman World interacted
• Black Africans were called Ethiopians due to the dark skin, but no association with dispossession
• Herodotus (flourished fifth century BCE) maintained that the Ethiopians were the tallest and most handsome of men and the most pious.
• Zeus may have been portrayed in the Inachus of Sophocles ( c. 496-406 BCE) as Black or dark skin Deity.
• Homeric epics describe Africans as semi-divine creatures whose country was a relaxing oasis for the gods. (Illiad 1.423, Odyssey, 1.22-23.

High-Handled Drinking Cup (Kantharos) in the Form of Two Heads, about 510–480 B.C., the London Class. Terracotta, 7 9/16 in. high. Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, Henry Lillie Pierce Fund, 98.926. Photograph © 2018 Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

Africans in Europe: Spread of Islam and Portuguese Exploration

Expansion of Islam: Africans in Iberia I

• Mostly through trade routes and military campaigns 🡺captives of war 🡺 “slaves” (universal custom)
• By the 8^th century Islam had reached the Iberian Peninsula (711- 1492)
• Many West Africans accompanied Islamic military campaigns to Iberia

​

Africans in Iberia II, Portuguese Exploration and Trade

• 1440s Portuguese explorers and merchants
• West and West-Central African coasts.
• Markets: sold all sort of goods, including captives of war 🡺 Portuguese taking more Africans to Iberia
• By 1492, more than thirty thousands Africans or Afro-Iberians individuals in Iberia
• Painting Chafariz d’El-Rey (The King’s Fountain) in the Alfama District, Lisbon, 1570-80. (Unit 1) Africans fulfilling many roles, yet process of race-making in place
• By 1500s Africans accompanied Spaniards to the Americas

Large presence of Africans and Afro-Iberians in Cities:

Lisbon, Sevilla, Cordoba, Granada, Valencia

Bridging Unit 1 to Unit 2: �Africans to the Americas

Map of the Caribbean Basin

Juan Garrido

• Born in 1487 in West or West-Central Africa (son of an African ruler, went to Europe to study, or enslaved)
• Ended up in Lisbon
• 1503, at 15 years of age, moved to Sevilla a year later and embarked to Hispaniola
• 1508 joined Ponce de León’s Campaign to Puerto Rico
• 1513, also with Ponce de León arrived in Florida (Must have traveled to Cuba)
• 1519 joined Hernan Cortés campaign to Tenochtitlán (Mexico City)
• 1520 Built a monument honoring the fallen Iberian soldiers
• Married and lived well in Mexico, however lost his fortunes
• Died in 1550; he was 67 years old

​

​

​

History of the Indies of New Spain and the Islands of Tierra Firme. The Encounter of Cortés and Moctezuma. Biblioteca Nacional de España.

Codex Azcatitlan, “The March of the Spaniards into Tenochtitlan.” Bibliothéque National de France.

The Trans-Atlantic Trade in African Individuals: �Humanity’s Historical Trauma

• https://www.slavevoyages.org/
• Trans-Atlantic Trade in Africans
• Intra-American – Africans Re-embarked to various regions in the Americas
• Ships’ names
• Port of embarkation
• Port of Arrival
• Ship Flags
• English, Spanish, Portuguese
• Resources
• Image Galleries
• Lesson Plans
• External Links
• Maps

SlaveVoyages Database

Resources for learning about/researching the transatlantic slave trade

• Christianization, Economically driven
• Tumbeiros (floating coffins)
• Notorious Stench
• Africans packed by gender (men separated from women)
• Children often were allowed to roam across the sections of the ships
• Individuals taken out to bathe and “dance” or exercise
• When suspected of illness, thrown overboard
• Most women were sexually assaulted and raped
• Hundred of Thousands Children and teens endured the Middle Passage
• Olaudah Equiano
• By the 18^th century, has become the most lucrative trade. Benefited trading in all goods
• Estimates vary: about 10 million Africans arrived alive to the Americas, about 15% died

​

​

Africans’ and African Diaspora’s Strategies of Freedom and their Contributions

​

​

Africans’ Strategies

• Used African legal systems to avoid being sold to the Americas
• Refused to eat, Suicide
• Revolted at sea. During the second half of the 18^th century, at least 10% of all voyages experienced an insurrection
• Because of their mobility, children contributed to Slave Ships’ insurrections. If discovered 🡺 punished
• 1839 The Amistad from Havana to Puerto Principe (Cuba)
• Sengbe Pieh (Joseph Cinque)
• Africans taken to Connecticut. Sustained trials until Supreme Court set them free
• Galvanized abolitionist movement
• 1841 The Creole. From Richmond and Hampton Roads, VA to New Orleans, LA. Madison Washington. 128 enslaved individuals to the Bahamas (British territory that had abolished slavery)

Enslavement and Freedom Dialectics, Virginia I

• 1619 first group of Africans held enslaved to Virginia
• STRATEGIES:
• Purchased their freedom, land, married, and achieved some success
• 1643 authorities in Virginia:
• Tithe on Black women (enslaved and free), turned them into an economic burden (as a spouse) for anyone but especially freed Black men (potential husbands)
• Limited single Black women’s income and paths to purchase freedom

Enslavement and Freedom Dialectics, Virginia II

• 1662 Partur Sequitur Ventrem (Enslaved women’s children 🡪 enslaved)
• Men no longer responsible for supporting their children with Black women
• 1667 Africans and Indians 🡪 a different type of Christians (less than Whites)
• 1670 all servants not being Christians imported into this colony (Virginia), by shipping shall be slaves for their lives
• 1672 Allowed the killing of enslaved Africans and Indians who ran away from their masters’ premises

​

An Act Declaring Who Shall Be Slaves (1670)

​

WHEREAS some dispute has arisen whither Indians taken in war by any other nation, and by that nation that taketh them sold to the English, are servants for life or term of years, it is resolved and enacted that all servants not being Christians imported into this colony by shipping shall be slaves for their lives; but what shall come by land shall serve, if boys or girls, until thirty years of age, if men or women, twelve years, and no longer.

Resistance, Strategies, Politics

• Marronage
• From Taíno word “cimarra” arrow, in Spanish “cimarron” – Running away
• Not only physical, but Political and Intellectual
• The actions of enslaved women
• African Diaspora Epistemology
• Palenques, Cumbes, Quilombos (Warrior Village Settlements in Kimbundu language)
• Great Dismal Swamp (Virginia – Nineteenth century)
• Some even dug out underground homes or lived in caves
• Included Europeans and Indigenous individuals as well
• Black Geographies (physical, imaginary, intellectual)
• Perceived by the authorities as criminal acts, not as political responses to enslavement’s violence

Quilombo dos Palmares, Pernambuco, North-East Brazil 1600s

• Lasted for a century
• Perhaps 15,000 individuals (Africans, Creoles, Whites, Indigenous, men, women, children)
• A semi-autonomous state
• Politically organized
• Helped defeat Dutch’s aspirations to seize Brazil
• Generations were born and lived free
• Established agreement with the authorities
• However, could not be fulfilled
• Eventually defeated late 17^th century

https://justworldnews.org/2021/06/23/1694-brazil-destroys-large-maroon-community-english-slavetrader-documents-his-work-some-news-from-europe/

Map Palmares, Brazil

https://www.blackpast.org/global-african-history/palmares-ca-1605-1694/

​

Image Courtesy Dr. Joao Reis

​

Statue Zumbi,�Salvador da Bahia�Brazil

Black Geographies I: September 1739 Stono Rebellion

• Group of men and women from Kongo/Angola region held enslaved in South Carolina
• Knew about Spanish Florida Freedom (sanctuary) offer
• Killed a few Whites overseers and owners
• Marched on their way to Florida
• Played drums
• With Flags and Banners (Congo Cultural elements)
• Militia overtook them, about 30 may have ran away, but 40 were killed

​

​

Horrid Massacre in Virginia. Illus. in: Authentic and Impartial Narrative of the Tragical Scene which Was Witnessed in Southampton County. [New York] 1831 . Prints and Photographs Division. https://www.loc.gov/item/today-in-history/september-09/

1740 South Carolina Slave Code (House of Assembly)

• Reaction to the Stono Rebellion
• Took away the few rights enslaved men and women may have had
• A few former enslaved folks had been able to secure freedom papers, constituting a small community of “Free People of Color”
• Rendered illegal for enslaved individuals to learn to read and write
• To grow their food
• To earn money
• To gather in groups

​

African Technological Contribution, Rice Cultivation

• Tidal or Flood plains rice cultivation (Oryza glaberrima)
• African rice species differs from Oryza sativa (Asian rice) also cultivated in flood plains
• African rice domesticated by African women for at least 2000 years
• Technological expertise shared by enslaved African women to Carolina rice planters remained silenced until recently

Extent of Indigenous West African Rice Zone. Center of Origin of African Rice Oryza glaberrima

A group of enslaved women hoeing rice on a rice plantation in South Carolina. Original engraving in Harper’s New Monthly Magazine, November 1859, volume 19, pp. 721-738

Sequelae of the Trans-Atlantic Trade �in Africans and enslavement

• Provided legal mechanisms to transform free individuals into commodities, sub-humans
• Devalued Africa, its inhabitants, people of African descent, and all things perceived as Black in the public sphere
• By the early 1600s, process that dismissed, disavowed, and silenced African Diaspora’s Political imaginary, technological contributions, and Epistemology
• It bred the construct of Race that evolved since then, and the world internalized to what we experience today

African Epistemology, �the Black Republic of Haiti

Location of Haiti in the Caribbean

St. Domingue/French/Haitian Revolution(s) Chronology

• 1750s Makandal (Revolution by poisoning)/ Captured
• 1763 Authorities’ reprisal against free people of Color
• 1779 800 men (women) Participated Siege of Savannah, GA
• 1789 Storm of Bastille-French Revolution
• 1791 Boukman and Cecile Fantimah, Boïs Cayman Voudou Ceremony - Insurrection
• 1792-1793 Spanish and British empires attacked France in St. Domingue
• 1793-1794 Abolition of Slavery in French World
• 1799 Napoleon Bonaparte Coup, First Consul
• 1802 Napoleon reinstated slavery in French Territories.
• Toussain L’Ouverture arrested and deported
• November 18, 1803, Vertières Battle. Jean-Jacques Dessalines’s army defeated French/European army (Napoleon biggest loss)
• 1804 Jean Jacques Dessalines declares Black Republic of Haiti

1805 Haitian Constitution, African Diaspora Epistemology Excerpts

• Slavery is abolished forever
• There is one law for everyone, whether it punishes or protects
• No one is worthy of being Haitian if he is not a good father, a good husband, and above all, a good soldier
• All distinctions of color among children of the same family, including the state’s chief must necessarily stop. Haitians will henceforth only be known generically as Blacks.
• The Crown is elective and nonhereditary
• Freedom of Worship is allowed
• A special law will be passed regarding children born outside of marriage

​

Excerpts from the 1805 Haitian Constitution

The Black Republic of Haiti

• Changed Western world for ever, in ways we have not completely grappled with.
• 1803 Napoleon, in need of cash sold Louisiana to the United States
• Ongoing source of inspiration for Black thinkers and freedom seekers
• 1804 Haiti 🡺 propelled the path towards the abolition of slavery throughout the Atlantic world
• All enslaved men and women, and abolitionists look up to Haiti
• Enslaving empires, slaveowners, authorities, panicked
• Empires and nations did not recognize Haiti until its leaders late 1860s
• Haiti had to compensate France for loss of properties (Recently the subject of a series of New York Times articles)

​

Global Impact of the Haitian Revolution

• 1807 British empire abolished the Trans-Atlantic Trade in Africans ONLY TO BRITISH REGIONS AND THE U.S.A.
• Trans-Atlantic trade in Africans thrived until the end of the 19^th century to Cuba, Puerto Rico, and Brazil
• Fear of Black insurrections 🡺 “Free Womb Laws” began emerging in the Americas in 1814, 1821...
• 1815-1816 Haiti assisted Latin America independence hero Simón Bolívar (Venezuela, Colombia, including Panama, Ecuador, Perú, and Bolivia)
• 1821 Haiti assisted Greece during its war of independence against the Ottoman Empire

Impact of the Haitian Revolution on Black Resistance in the U.S.

• July 1822 Denmark Vesey. free carpenter (formally enslaved), was planning a revolt following St. Domingues’1791. Wanted to sail to Haiti afterwards. Two enslaved leaked information before hand. Charlestown authorities arrested Vesey and 130 more.
• August 1831 Nat Turner, enslaved man who was allowed to learn to read and write, in Southampton Co. VA (authorities believed he was inspired by Haiti)
• Abolitionist Movement benefited from the emergence and the existence of Haiti

​

Monument to Denmark Vesey, Charleston, South Carolina

Reactions Against Haiti and African-Black Epistemologies

• 19th Century, third wave of enslavement:
• Unites State’s Domestic Trade in enslaved individuals
• Antebellum South, Cuba, and Puerto Rico
• Spike in Trans-Atlantic Trade in Africans to Spanish America (Cuba and Puerto Rico) and Brazil (Until the end of the nineteenth century)
• The United States became involved with trade in Africans to Cuba and South America
• Violence and brutal repression of individuals held enslaved
• Slavery abolished in 1829, 1838, 1848, 1850s, 1865/1866, 1873, 1886, 1888

​

​

​

​

​

• Black Geographies:
• Sojourner Truth (1797-1883), abolitionist, feminist, activist (Speaker, postcards)
• Frederick Douglass (1817 – 1895)
• Virginia/North Carolina Dismal Swamp (maroonage)
• Harriet Tubman (c.1820– 1913)
• Slave Narratives
• Abolition movements in the US (1839 Amistad case)
• Harriet Jacobs (1813 – 1897)
• Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, 1861

African/Black Diaspora Epistemologies in The United States

Black Geographies of Creativity

• African American Spirituality/Music/Art
• Banjo
• Gospel
• Spirituals hymns
• Blues, Jazz
• Rock and Roll, Pop, Hip-Hop, Rap
• Literature, Poetry, Culinary
• Samba, Capoeira, Merengue, Cumbia, Tango, Salsa, Reggeaton…

​

​

​

Lincoln’s Reply to Equality Issue, October 15, 1858 �(Chicago Daily Press and Tribune)

I am not, nor ever have been, in favor of bringing about in any way the social and political equality of the white and black races—that I am not nor ever have been in favor of making voters or jurors of negroes, nor of qualifying them to hold office, nor to intermingling with white people; and I will say in addition to this that there is a physical difference between the white and black races which will ever forbid the two races living together on terms of social and political equality. And inasmuch as they cannot so live, while they do remain together, there must be the position of superior. I am as much as any other man in favor of having the superior position assigned to the white race.

https://presidentlincoln.illinois.gov/learn/educators/educator-resources/teaching-guides/lincolns-evolving-views-on-race/

Freedom, Roads to Liberty, Contested Citizenship

• Civil War (1861-1865)
• Emancipation Proclamation
• Juneteenth
• Reconstruction
• Racial Terror-ism= Racism
• Shattered Liberty
• The Scramble of Africa (Berlin Conference)
• 1891-1893 Frederick Douglass U.S.A. Ambassador to Haiti (1889-1891)
• Global Racism

​

​

Frederick Douglass and the Haiti Commission on USS Tennessee in Key West.

Image: Florida Keys Public Libraries

Suggested Additional Resources

• Gomez, Michael A. Reversing Sail: A History of the African Diaspora. Second Edition. New York: Cambridge University Press. 2005. 2020
• Restall, Matthew. Black Conquistadors: Armed Africans in Early Spanish America. The Americas
• Vol. 57, No. 2, (Oct., 2000), pp. 171-205
• Robert Hayden's Poem "Middle Passage"
• Documentary Film: Traces of the Trade. A History of the Deep North. 2008 ‧ 1h 26m. By Katerina Browne, Jude Ray, and Alia Kovgan. https://www.tracesofthetrade.org/
• Documentary film: Jean-Jacques Dessalines, the Man who Defeated Napoleon Bonaparte. Can be purchased for $20.00 at:�Arnold Antonin Films https://arnold-antonin-films.myshopify.com
• Trouillot, Michel-Rolph. Silencing the Past: Power and the Production of History
• Sue Peaboy and Keila Grinberg. Slavery, Freedom, and the Law in the Atlantic World: A Brief History with Documents
• Laurent Dubois and John Garrigus. Slave Revolution in the Caribbean, 1789-1804
• Hudson, Peter James. Frederick Douglass and American empire in Haiti. https://bostonreview.net/articles/frederick-douglass-and-american-empire-in-haiti/

Thank you