Black Majority Book Review

” For many, the economic structure of slavery still held strong and it established status in British America. Slavery had begun in the later half of the 17th century and in many ways, it had made Atlantic commerce and overseas settlement possible. Thousands of Africans had been shipped overseas to work in the fields of staple crops. In the years leading up to the American Revolution, high concentrations of slaves remained in the southern colonies where they continued to labour on cotton and tobacco plantations. Of the thirteen colonies, Georgia, Virginia and the Carolinas held the highest concentrations of slaves. In 1775, it is estimated that of the 2.5 million people living in the thirteen colonies, 500,000 were blacks. The vast majority of these blacks were slaves, with many labouring for their masters under harsh conditions. Although their experiences were difficult, blacks rarely revolted or staged rebellions against their masters. This has often been associated with the plantation system, and the role it played in severing blacks’ ties to one another. As highlighted by historian Silvia Frey, “The North American plantation organization, with the dominating presence of the master, inhibited the development of the tribal cohesiveness that characterized the islands’ plantation organization and produced widespread violence against whites by black guerrilla bands.” However, despite the absence of any significant

Phillips writes that the defining characteristic of a ‘Southerner’ is a feeling of white racial solidarity which casts all other social considerations in the shade; it is the “cardinal test of a Southerner.” When Phillips touches upon the subject of non-slaveholding whites, he emphasizes their zeal for the primacy of white civilization as an end unto itself. He relates two contemporary accounts of non-slaveholders, one a tinner and the other an overseer, to demonstrate this fervor but pointedly devalues their economic attachments to slavery, writing, “Both of them, and a million of their non-slaveholding like, had a still stronger social prompting: the white men’s ways must prevail; the Negroes must be kept innocuous.” Phillips rejects out of hand the sway of overt pecuniary motives against the weight of racial ones and this rejection is so absolute in part because “it is otherwise impossible to account

John. W. Blessingame, The Slave Community: The Plantation Life in The Antebellum South (Oxford University Press, Inc: 1972, 1979).

There has been many historians and theorists who have tackled colonial slavery. One of them is Ira Berlin whose book Many Thousands Gone is his take on slavery diversity in American history and how slavery is at the epicenter of economic production, amongst other things. He separates the book into three generations: charter, plantation and revolutionary, across four geographic areas: Chesapeake, New England, the Lower country and the lower Mississippi valley. In this paper, I will discuss the differences between the charter and plantation generations, the changes in work and living conditions, resistance, free blacks and changes in manumission.

The acclaimed book begins with Georgia beginning as a dry and modest colony. As the years pass, these ideals and morals are changed to desiring more than a hardworking farmer. The people of Georgia desired to have slaves. Therefore, Georgia changed and started a path to become identical to South Carolina. However, as the amount of plantations sky-rocketed, so did the need for more slaves. It is a marvel to imagine that I live in the city of Savannah that was a beacon for the selling and exchanging of human beings.

Stewart writes, “A fundamental argument of this book is that planters used the environment and appropriated knowledge about it to reinforce their own class interests, and that slaves created counterstrategies to promote their own interests” (Stewart xii). This book proves that without slavery, the Georgia settlers could not have succeeded. They also used slavery to reinforce class systems. Even though slaves had more knowledge on the subject matter, they were not allowed to live as well as the settlers and were treated as lower than the others. Chapter three goes into detail about slavery and how the Georgia coast thrived due to slave help.

In their thought-provoking but generally well-received book, Myne Owne Ground: Race and Freedom on Virginia’s Eastern Shore, 1640-1676¸ authors T.H. Breen and Stephen Innes investigate a heretofore little-known community of free blacks. Despite the burgeoning slave trade and generally held racist beliefs in pre-Colonial Virginia, the authors argue, convincingly, that a community based more on land ownership than race as a social divider thrived, albeit only for a generation. They further explore the origins and eventual demise of this curious but egalitarian system. Though it goes against the broad swath of our cultural

On September 9, 1739, the Stono Rebellion took place in the colony of South Carolina. The slaves, lead by an Angolan named Jemmy, stunned the plantation owners in their revolt against their oppressive lifestyle. Their goal was to march all the way to Spanish Florida, but they were eventually stopped by the militia. In total, about 60 white civilians were killed and many more slaves experienced the same fate. This was such a significant uprising, not only because of the lack of information we have about rebellions in general, but because it showed that slaves had the ability to revolt against the harsh lifestyle that was forced upon them. While most historians can agree that this was one of the most influential revolts, the best way to interpret this event is still debated. Some historians, like William Stephen, hone in on the aspect of competition in his piece “Spanish Designs and Slave Resistance”. While other look at specific factors. For example, John K, Thornton sees that the best way to view the Stono Rebellion is to look at the African background of slaves in his essay, “African Dimension of the Stono Rebellion”. Edward A Pearson, for example, asserts gender is the way to comprehend this revolt in his essay “Rebelling As Men”. All of these historians address important factors of the Stono Rebellion, however in order to best understand the Stono Rebellion one must consider both gender and African background and how it increased competition between the English and

While other authors focus their attention in regards to Reconstruction in the Southern states after the American Civil War on political matters and the meaning of Reconstruction itself, John Rodrigue ventures into the world of Sugar and the relationships between planters and freedmen to illustrate the creation of a labor system within the world of sugar cane plantations in Louisiana. By concentrating on this specific business and region, the author is able to illustrate the factors that shaped labor during and after the Civil War, while showing how Reconstruction altered life in terms of labor for both whites and African Americans. Rodrigue argues that by focusing on this specific region reveals how blacks were able to gain negotiating power with planters in an effort to support free labor. By utilizing primary and secondary sources, the author frames the narrative and provide the reader with a personal perspective into the free labor system.

The task assigned is a review of the book Black and Blue by Anna Quindlen. I will provide examples and summarize the main concepts of the book to include Intimate Partner Violence, Battering, and Intimate Terrorism. I will reference the text Family Violence, Across the Lifespan by Ola W. Barnett, Cindy Miller-Perrin, and Robin D. Perrin in order to support my theoretical claims. I will select a critical part of the book and explain why it was challenging to read and understand based on my perspective, and then select a character to analyze using one of the theoretical perspective. This book is sad and disturbing, the punishment inflicted on Fran by her husband Bobby Benedetto is unacceptable and

The crops grown on plantations and the slavery system changed significantly between 1800-1860. In the early 1800s, plantation owners grew a variety of crops – cotton, sugar, rice, tobacco, hemp, and wheat. Cotton had the potential to be profitable, but there was wasn’t much area where cotton could be grown. However, the invention of the cotton gin changed this - the cotton gin was a machine that made it much easier to separate the seeds from cotton. Plantation owners could now grow lots of cotton; this would make them a lot of money. As a result, slavery became more important because the demand for cotton was high worldwide. By 1860, cotton was the main export of the south. The invention of the cotton gin and high demand for cotton changed

T.H. Breen's and Stephen Innes’s book "Myne Owne Ground" does and outstanding job of pointing out the difference in perspectives when it came to living in the south and being black was like. It goes in depth and shows how a black person was competent and was capable to acquire a wealth that was comparable to a wealthy white man, but it is never recognized by the general white population. The authors make an argument that in early colonial Virginia blacks that owned property were able to live semi-normal, if not prosperous, racism free lives. Breen and Innes argue that before the Virginia slave codes were passed, property owning blacks had a chance to be viewed as

Black Movements In America is written by Cedric J. Robinson, who is a professor of Black Studies and Political Science at the University of California, Santa Barbara. Robinson traces the emergence of Black political cultures in the United States from slave resistance in the sixteenth and seventeenth century to the civil rights movement of the present. He also focuses on Black resistance which was forged from a succession of quests such as The return to Africa; escape and alliances with anti-colonial Native- American resistance; and eventually emigration. This is a historical primer whose subject matter is well-indicated by the title. The Narrative focuses on the chronological poles of robinson 's ranging, chronological and compelling narrative of movements in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries maroon societies, and urban community organized during the 'late ' years of black power movements.

Blassingame, John W. The Slave Community: Plantation Life in the Antebellum South. New York: Oxford University Press, 1972.

During the development of the colonies and the nation as a whole, slaves were utilized in order to produce the crops and perform laborious tasks that were “below” white people. In the 1660s, there was an increased demand for tobacco products as well as indigo and rice in England (“African American Slavery in the Colonial Era, 1619-1775”). In order to fulfill the demand, there was a spike in interest in purchasing slaves. More and more slaves were needed to produce larger amounts of crops for the plantation owners.