Coming to America: Portrait of Colonial Life: Introduction of Slavery in Colonial America
For most of the 17th century, the number of slaves in the American colonies is quite small. Indentured servants and the settlers themselves handle most of the colonies' labor needs. The transition to slave labor in the Chesapeake is the result of ec...
Tattered Remains: System of Sharecropping
At first, the Freedman's Bureau grants land from abandoned plantations to thousands of black families, but the "gift" is only temporary as most of the land is returned to its former owners. Northerners assume that a free labor system will emerge in ...
Tattered Remains: Obstruction of Voting Rights for Southern Blacks
Few white Southerners ever accept the idea of racial equality. The fact that former slaves acquire legal and political rights is the result of federal support which all but vanishes after federal troops withdraw in 1877. The Fifteenth Amendment that...
Tattered Remains: Rebuilding African-American Family Structures
One of the most striking features of the Reconstruction period is the effort of blacks to rebuild their family structures. Marriage between African-Americans is legalized; their children are their own and cannot be sold away. The traditional family ...
Progressive Era, The: African-Americans and Reform
One social question that receives relatively little attention from white progressives is race. Among African Americans themselves, however, the progressive era produces some significant challenges to existing racial norms. Black women engaged in wel...
Master and Slave: Power of the Planter Aristocracy
The South in the mid nineteenth century is one of the few areas in the Western world where slavery still exists. The countryside is often portrayed as a society replete with great plantations and wealthy landowners, but more typical is a landscape p...
Master and Slave: Rich Culture Created from Backdrop of Slavery
On the narrow ground of their lives, slaves create a culture that is a nexus of kinship and family rich with religious, political, philosophical, and musical traditions. Slave religion combines traditional African religion with aspects of evangelica...
Master and Slave: Effect of Slavery on Southern Society, The
Southern slaveholders in the 19th century pride themselves on their paternalism and how they care for their slaves which they contrast with the plight of the Northern workforce. If asked whether or not white and black people could ever live together...
Master and Slave: Peculiar Institution, The
A slave is legally defined as property, a subordinate position enforced by violence. Although unfree labor is primarily used in the field of agriculture, almost 20% work in cities or towns as skilled artisans, sometimes earning enough to buy their o...
Master and Slave: Life of a Slave
Slaves generally receive enough basic necessities to live and work: corn meal and salt pork to eat, cheap clothing and shoes to wear, and crude cabins in which to live. Life for women in the slave community may take on many different roles, from the...