Race Was Invented To Justify Slavery
Once people are defined as inhuman because of the color of their skin, you are free to treat them like animals. This is exactly what happened to blacks in America.
The first blacks who arrived in Virginia where from Europe, not Africa. They came to Virginia in 1619 and were not initially considered slaves. They were indentured servants who worked as temporary labor to pay off their passage debt. They worked in the fields alongside various other racial groups who also came from Europe like the Italians and Irish. They all slept together and ate together. These blacks had the same rights as everyone else. They could run for political office, vote, and marry anyone they wanted, regardless of race. In essence,
A large portion of them worked for the Freedmen's Bureau. Primarily, the Bureau got to be known as the key category of welfare organization of the federal government. It was an agency that managed the condition of freedmen, such as schooling, work, and land, all of which were things the freedmen had come across. The government was there to encourage them in managing those issues. While most southern whites were hostile to its central goal to teach and engage blacks, numerous blacks felt that the North wasn't doing what's needed to help previous slaves get a conventional
In the nineteenth century, white Americans relied on free labor from black slaves heavily. The supporters of slavery used economic, legal, and religious arguments to defend slavery. Many people began to question whether slavery truly was moral or not. Abolitionists had their opinions on slavery, but southerners used economic, legal, and religious arguments to justify themselves as the correct ones. These apologists were including information about economic prosperity, the property rights, and Christianity religion.
The wealthy were in need of cheap labor, and with the amount of blacks being sentenced, most jails still functioning were overflowing with them. Leasing was designed for black convicts, and laws passed allowed towns and independent men to lease them for a price. They black convicts were put to work building railroads, levees or doing work for private owners. The convicts did work that free labor could not. Conditions were horrible and they were forced to work knee deep in muck, in malaria-ridden swamps, and to dynamite tunnels.
During this time period, blacks had many different statuses. Some were slaves forever, some were like indentured servants. They were allowed to actually own property, get married and after they served their time they were freed. Slaves were at the bottom of the social order but the individuals above them were not much better. The white people that were poor did not have as many hardships because they always thought at least they were not slaves, even though they were towards the bottom of the social structure.
“The Hypocrisy of American Slavery: Slavery at its best” Frederick Douglass an activist for anti racism and also an abolitionist’s speech “The Hypocrisy of Slavery” was given on the occasion of celebrating the independence day. Here, in this speech he actually brought out some questions like why we should celebrate Independence Day while almost four million people were kept chained as a slave. He actually mocked the fact of the people of America’s double standards which is that they are singing out the song of liberty, on the other hand holding the chain of slavery. Frederick Douglass, a former American-African slave who managed to escape from his slavery and later on became an abolitionist gave this speech on Fourth of July,
The book explains how at first, the black salves were similar to white servants. They worked together and were sometimes freed after a certain period. The whites and blacks hung out after work and often had kids. Few have stated that many masters in the South treated their slaves better than those up North. Some may say this because masters in the South saw their slaves as an investment, which makes prefect sense.
In 1607, the first wave of colonial settlers arrived in Virginia and began to establish Jamestown. Many of the new settlers came from wealthy families never performing a day of manual labor. With agricultural farming, being the revenue source of the new colonial settlers there would soon be a great demand for labor. Contracts of indentures were expiring and with much devastation in England, there was a shortage of English servants.
They were sent to America through slave trade by the Europeans capturing them. Slavery was found in the rural areas of the South. African Americans had to live in a repulsive cabin with very little to eat and spend all day long working in the plantation while the hot, bright sun beaming on them. With all of this happening,
America was founded on the labor and at the expense of its black citizens. However, blacks have not always been considered citizens. There was a time during the slavery period in America, before the civil war, where African Americans were looked as less than human. They were property and many white wealthy men were given the right to own them like property. It was also during this time that other Americans started helping in the fight for African Americans rights in America.
They freed themselves by 1865. They founded institutions, for example, black colleges, churches, banks, insurance companies, fraternities and sororities to uplift their race. “The process of enslavement was almost unbelievably painful and bewildering for the Africans. Completely cut off from their native land,
Slavery began long before the colonization of North America. This was an issue in ancient Egypt, as well as other times and places throughout history. In discussing the evolution of African slavery from its origins, the resistance and abolitionist efforts through the start of the Civil War, it is found to have resulted in many conflicts within our nation. In 1619, the first Africans in America arrived in Jamestown on a Dutch ship.
People of color were long decided that they were not pure. Moreover in 1661 a law was passed that stated if a white servant run away with a negro they were given special services for extra years to the master of the runaway negro, because servants white or black worked together and did not see black and white. And in 1691 there was a ban in interracial marriages, a white man or woman was not to marry a Negro, Indian and mulatoo even If they were free. All these laws described above were passed during a labor intensive time in Virginia, were black slaves worked more, were treated harshly just like the negro Emmanuel and were considered property of the master who did as he saw fit if the slave misbehaved. In the article written by Omi and Winant they describe the first step of racial formation theory as, “ A process of historically situated projects in which human bodies and social structure are presented and organized.
David Walker acknowledged that slavery had long been practiced in Africa, but he charged white Christian slaveholders with greater crimes against humanity and greater hypocrisy in justifying those crimes than any prior slave system had been guilty of. Twentieth century scholarship has lent much support to the contentions of Walker’s and others in the African American antislavery vanguard that slavery as perpetrated by the European colonizers of Africa and the Americas brought man’s inhumanity to man to a level of technological efficiency unimagined by previous generations. When Portuguese mariners began trading gold, ivory, and spices with the chieftains of the coast of West Africa in the mid-fifteenth century, they discovered that African prisoners of war and their children could be readily supplied for sale as slaves.
While slavery and black freedom were a huge topic, the one right behind it was women 's rights. There were many women at this time that started to speak out. There were many black women such as Sojourner Truth and Harriet Tubman who both started the movement not only to African American rights, but womens rights too. Look up Sojourner Truth 's "Ain 't I a woman"
In the minds of many Southerners, without slavery, the South and America as a whole, wouldn’t continue to be a growing economic powerhouse, and would lose its culture as a nation where White Christian, males, ruled society. For many, there was no South, no America, without slavery. History has shown time and time again that power corrupts. To hold onto their power, slave owners made sure their slaves were kept uneducated.