American African-American History Antebellum America

The institution of slavery had existed in Western Civilization since biblical times, but the first slaves came to the Western Hemisphere in the early 1500s. However, not until 20 African slaves were brought to Jamestown, Virginia, in 1619, was slavery present in America. In fact is it not altogether clear if the first African slaves were brought as indentured servants (to be released in seven years) or chattel slavery (never to be released). Nevertheless, it quickly became a moot point. A series of complex colonial laws made sure that Africans and their descendants were to remain in slavery for perpetuity. What came first: racism or slavery? It is hard to say, but racism was not institutionalized in America until white Americans created a language to describe American people groups. When in 1619 the first African-American came to the Jamestown colony that language was already present. Europeans from the 1200’s to the early 1500’s used terms such as “negro” to refer to persons with dark colored skin. These terms, though, initially were not used to denigrate a “race” or caste, nor were they used in a genealogical sense. They were used to designate a different physical attribute. Later, “Negro” and “Mulatto” gained a negative connotation.

As white Americans learned to name minorities, so also a system of control arose. Racism was a justification for control. Racism with all its stereotyping components evolved into the deprecating form in which it exists today. The historian David R. Roediger argues, “The idea of race, then, emerges from the ways that social meaning becomes attached to physical differences. White Europeans gave such meaning an inherent, God-given origin, and [white] Americans kept up the tradition.”

“Blackness” was considered to be a disease. The rhetoric of disease was a critical component in white American racism. White Americans loved to frame their racism in scientific terms. One favorite theory was that the skin color and physiognomy of the black were the result of congenital leprosy. Benjamin Rush, the Father of American Psychiatry, saw black people as the greatest threat to the public health in Eighteenth Century America. Rush argued that the black skin of African-Americans was the result of a form of leprosy. Contemporary racist literature venerates these racist stereotypes and maintains them in the American language.

Most slaves were taken from Western part of Africa. The African-American historian Benjamin Quarles describes these West African people groups:

Of the varied Old World people that entered America, none came with as wide a geographical area as the blacks. The vast majority came from the West Coast of Africa, a 3000 mile stretch extending from the Senegal River . . . . to Angola. . . These groups shared no common language . . . Indeed, there are more than 200 distinct languages in present day Nigeria alone. There was no such thing as the “African personality” since the varied groups differed as much in their way of life as in the physical characteristics they exhibited . . . Whatever the type of society, the different groups of Africans all operated under well-organized social systems . . . African societies before the coming of the Europeans were not backward and changeless . . .

Quarles also described slave trading and the middle passage. Normally, European settlers established forts on the edge of the jungle. The Africans, wishing to obtain the trade goods, would capture young men and women and take them to the fort. The terror is unimaginable! African young people were stolen from their families and were never seen again. The slaves were kept in makeshift prisons or warehouses until their proprietor had enough to justify a shipment. That number was about 250.

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