Colonial Slavery Links
 

As I'm interested in genealogy and history, I get Colonial Williamsburg Magazine. The current Winter issue has quite a bit about slavery in it - terribly interesting! I had always assumed that Crispus Attucks was a free black man, and it says that he was a runaway slave. It also discusses who of the Founding Fathers owned slaves, and who emancipated theirs.

Since we of GreekChat seem to discuss racism, slavery, and the themes they present, and since PBS is presenting a decent series on slaves & their descendants, I thought I'd post a few links:

The magazine:
http://www.colonialwilliamsburg.org/...06/slavery.cfm

"Finding Slaves in Unexpected Places
Keeping Blacks in Bondage Was Not a Southern Monopoly
by James Breig

AMONG THE MINUTEMEN who turned out on Lexington Green on April 19, 1775, to confront the British and start the fight for American freedom was Prince Estabrook, a black man and a slave. He was wounded in the shoulder. Five years before, runaway slave Crispus Attucks was among five men slain by British soldiers in the Boston Massacre, a confrontation he may have rashly initiated.

Some modern Americans might guess that Estabrook and Attucks were southern slaves visiting New England with their masters, but they were Massachusetts residents, two of the hundreds of thousands of men, women, and children in northern bondage during the eighteenth century. In the early 1700s, slaves were one-sixth of Philadelphia's population. A New York visitor around the time of the Revolution said that "it rather hurts an European eye to see so many Negro slaves upon the street." At the time, there were as many as half a million slaves in the northern colonies, about 20 percent of the population. When the newborn United States took its first census in 1790, there were still more than 2,600 slaves in Connecticut, nearly 9,000 in Delaware, 11,000-plus in New Jersey, and almost 22,000 in New York.

The history of northern slavery almost exactly coincides with the 100 years of the eighteenth century, from an increasing reliance on slave labor as the century dawned to New York's 1799 law that set in motion the slow manumission of slaves in that state.

According to Leslie M. Harris, an Emory University history professor, the first non–Native American settler in Manhattan was a free black man: Jan Rodrigues, a sailor marooned in 1613 by a Dutch vessel. Her book, In the Shadow of Slavery: African Americans in New York City, 1626–1863, tells how Rodrigues married into an Indian tribe and became a negotiator between it and Dutch traders. After Peter Minuit bought Manhattan in 1626, more settlers arrived and brought eleven slaves with them—just seven years after the first Africans landed in Virginia...."

There's much more, plus photos, in the link above.

Some Other Links:
www.slavenorth.com
www.hudsonvalley.org/slavery
www.pbs.org/wnet/slavery

Re: Colonial Slavery Links
 

Unfortunately I don't think "discuss" is the word I would choose to describe the mudslinging going on in those two "other" threads.:D

Great links, BTW

Re: Re: Colonial Slavery Links
 

It's hard to discuss, when the definition of racism is not known by most of the most prolific discussers.

Honeychile, thank you for posting these links as well as the article. I know that I can use them in research for various other projects.

Best wishes with your continued genealogy research.:)

Honey, my fourth-grade daughter is studying Crispus Attucks as we speak! I'm sending her teacher the link. Thanks!!


Edited for spelling.

Thanks for this information 'honeychile'! ;)

Re: Re: Re: Colonial Slavery Links
 

I know I shouldn't ask ...

What, pray tell, is the true "definition of racism", according to you?

...And everyone else - always willing to help! Enjoy!

ETA: To those who question "discussion", let's remember that some people take longer on their journey to enlightenment than others. I'd like to paraphrase what I heard someone say at a genealogical conference, something that made me realize my own need to learn how to do ALL genealogy, not just my own:

"NONE of us had anything to do with our ethnicity, but EACH of us has everything to do with our attitudes about it!"

So, as we discuss, remember that you could be the one who needs to learn something from the discussion, not the other person! I don't think we'll ever all hold hands and sing, Kumbaya, but let's not hinder the process, okay?

Also a good addition since it is Black History Month this month. That's some interesting stuff, honeychile.

she couldve posted this on the 32nd of nevuary and still a "good addition," correct?

is anyone in the nyc area? check out the slavery in NY exhibit by the NYHS. i have my strongly worded opinions, but it does achieve its aim of informing the public that NY participated in slavery very much like the south, and in no means the "land of the free" to runaway to.

Of course. It just seemed like a good place to point out that it is Black History Month.

The African American Museum in Detroit and Greenfield Village in Dearborn also have some very good exhibits which address the realities of slavery.

Good point, honeychile. I know I learned a lot from the discussions in the other threads.

Honeychile,

Thanks very much for the post and the links.

I've actually had high school and college courses that touched on Northern slavery, but the historical facts are so easily overlooked or forgotten because we are so focused on the Civil War and its causes and effects.

In my hometown, I get to be the first person to talk to the elementary school kids about history. One of the things I always show them is a copy of the 1790 census, which shows how many slaves are in each household.

There were less than 100 people in the village, yet there were two slaves.

Another thing that people tend to overlook (for whatever reason) is how many Northerners, who didn't own slaves, still went South to fight for the Confederacy. When the author of "Don't Know Much About The Civil War", Kenneth C. Davis, came to Pittsburgh, the reenactors who usually are there for this type of activity had to explain to him that entire units of men from the greater Pittsburgh area were Confederates.

Let's face it - NONE of us know all there is to know about our own history! Yet, so much of our own history grows out of the results of the American Revolution and the Civil War, we could never study it enough!

Why didn't the plantation owners just go to Mexico for the labor?