The Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade
The transition point/journey between freedom and enslavement
Middle Passage
Refers to the forced movement or scattering of African people away from their ancestral homeland
(African) Diaspora
Two forms of Resistance
Everyday acts (Left-Hand Work) and Dramatic and Larger Forms (Uprisings & Rebellion)
What were the patriarchal British kinship mandates for inheritance?
Mandates that allowed children to inherit the class status of their father
System of society or government in which men hold power and women are largely excluded from it (Sexism)
Patriarchy
A global economic system of trade that included the Middle Passage
Triangle Trade
Coined in 1989 by Kimberle Crenshaw, this term provides a framework for understanding how oppression is experienced uniquely at the intersection of various identities creating overlapping and interdependent systems of discrimination or disadvantage
Intersectionality
Define Bacon's Rebellion & Response of the Elite
Multi-racial revolt against landowners/ elite that almost toppled the capital colony of Virginia
Response: Enforced distinctions by developing privileges for Whiteness through differences in legal punishments along racial lines
What was the Three-Fifths Compromise?
"the offspring follows the belly"; this statute maintained the racial hierarchy, created a permanent labor supply, made slave status inheritable, and cast Black women's wombs as the producers of their children's subjugated condition
Define Partus Sequitir Ventrem (Virginia, 1662) & It's impact on the colonial society
Companies like these were hired by countries to engage in the human trafficking of enslaved Africans
Royal African Company (charters)
Studying how history has been written
Historiography
How did the experiences of enslaved men and women differ aboard slave ships, and how did these differences shape the dynamics of revolt?
Women: Above board; more vulnerable to sexual assault, allowed them to coordinate and facilitate revolt; engaged in subtle acts of resistance like refusing to eat and suicide
Men: More likely to be placed in the lower decks; engaged in overt physical resistance
Benefits of anti-miscegenation laws to enslavers
White men could profit from their sexual assaults on Black women; created a permanent labor supply
How did Black women benefit from the patriarchal mandates of British inheritance and kinship laws during the 1600's?
Secured freedom for their children because wealth and status were inherited from the father
Primary Intervention: Slave Trade as a Crime Against Humanity
Slave Trade is a legal violation under international law; descendants remain burdened by enduring effects and justifies legal claims for reparations
a derogatory term that refers to interracial relationships and reproduction between races, especially when one is white
Miscegenation
Why did Black people participate in the Revolutionary War?
Loyal to the principal of freedom: Lord Dunmore's Proclamation; used military service as a way to legitimize their claim to citizenship and freedom
What role did Cardinal-King Henry & Gomes Zurara play in developing justifications for the slave trade?
Gomes Zurara published a book that justified the trade as intended to save souls; developed the earliest stereotypes of Blackness as inferior and beast-like
First major text written on Africa from a Eurocentric perspective (Master Narrative)
How was the meaning of race constructed?
Through a legal apparatus that established privileges for Whiteness and discriminatory legal punishments for Blackness in society
Dum Diversas (1452)
Papal Bull of Pope Nicholas V, Sanctioned European attacks on Islamic Societies and perpetual slavery
“invade, search out, capture, vanquish, and subdue all the Saracens [Muslims] and pagans . . . and other enemies of Christ wheresoever placed,” as well as “their kingdoms, duchies, counties, principalities, [and other] possessions . . . and to reduce their persons into perpetual slavery.”
Developed to perpetuate slavery, generate profit, and maintain White supremacy; enforced through controlling Black women's sexuality and reproductive experiences
(Construction of ) Race
Primary Intervention of Shipboard Revolts: Men, Women, and Resistance
Revolts were frequent and helped shape the structure and limits of the slave trade; significantly impacted the volume of the trade
Significance of the John Punch Case
Three runaways, captured after attempting to escape
The significance of mental liberation according to Frederick Douglass and how he attempted to achieve it
“Knowledge makes a man unfit to be a slave”
Enslavement was both a physical & psychological experience
Mental liberation through education allowed him to see himself as human, capable of thought, choice, and destiny