1. Planting Seeds: Tobacco, Ideology, Race

2. Write a Definition of “Race”

3. Circle each group you think is a race
African
Arab
Asian
Caucasian
Chinese
English
Greek
Hindu
Hispanic
Iraqi
Italian
Jewish
Mayan
Native American

4. Historians’ Definitions of “Race”
"Race is an idea that evolves over time…“
"Moments in America's past reveal how this idea took hold… “
"Race was never just a matter of how you look; it's about how people assign meaning to how you look.“
"America created a story, a story of race."
Underline parts of your definition that match the definitions provided by historians.

5. We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal
How can a nation proclaim “all men are created equal” and also sanction slavery?
Why was the idea of race needed to reconcile these two principles?
Drafted by Thomas Jefferson between June 11 and June 28, 1776, the Declaration of Independence is at once the nation's most cherished symbol of liberty and Jefferson's most enduring monument. Here, in exalted and unforgettable phrases, Jefferson expressed the convictions in the minds and hearts of the American people. The political philosophy of the Declaration was not new; its ideals of individual liberty had already been expressed by John Locke and the Continental philosophers. What Jefferson did was to summarize this philosophy in "self-evident truths" and set forth a list of grievances against the King in order to justify before the world the breaking of ties between the colonies and the mother country.
While it is ironic that Jefferson wrote both the Declaration of Independence, and speculated in his Notes on Virginia that Africans might be mentally and physically inferior to Europeans, why is it also logical that he is author of the ideas expressed in both documents?

6. 1. List different types of people who inhabited the eastern seaboard of North America in the first half of the 17th century
Tuscarora
Iroquois
Algonquin
Cherokee
Example: Native Americans
Examples: Native peoples, Spaniards, English, French, Africans…
List types of people
subdivide the types of people into sub-categories ex. By tribe, religion, occupation, social class, etc.
2. Subdivide each type of people into four sub-categories

7. According to historian Robin D. G. Kelley:
“Africans came to the New World not as Black people, not as Negroes. They didn't see themselves that way. They saw themselves according to their own sort of ethnic identities. The same was true of Europeans who viewed themselves as Portuguese, or English, or Irish.”
-(Interview for RACE - The Power of an Illusion)

8. Larry Adelman, the executive producer of RACE, adds:
"It may be hard for us to comprehend today that the American Indians didn't see themselves as Indians. Nor did the English see themselves as white. Neither saw themselves as a race. The peoples of the Americas were divided into separate and distinct nations - hundreds of them. Amerindian nations such as the Algonquians differentiated themselves from the Iroquois or Cherokee by religion, language and customs just as Protestant, English-speaking Britain distinguished itself from Catholic, Spanish-speaking Spain."

9. According to historian Gary Nash:
When Jamestown colonist John Rolfe took his new bride, Pocahontas (who had converted to Christianity), back to London in 1616, they caused an uproar among the lords and ladies and dukes and earls of the Court of King James. Not because Rolfe, an Englishman, had married an Indian, but because Pocahontas, a princess, had married a commoner.
-(Forbidden Love: The Secret History of Mixed Race America. Edge Books. New York:1999)
Why was the marriage of John Rolfe and Pocahontas scandalous?

10. Historian Karen Ordahl Kupperman points out:
That, as for physical distinctions, native Americans were most struck by the English colonists' beards and their smell. The colonists wore the same clothes for weeks, were covered with lice, and rarely bathed. The English didn't describe the Indians' color as red in the early days, but rather as tanned or tawny.
-(Indians and English: Facing Off in North America. Cornell: 2000)

11. According to historian Ira Berlin:
Early
American
society, people
distinguish themselves
by religion; they distinguish
themselves by nationality; they
distinguish themselves by family. And
however they distinguish themselves, they
arrange themselves in a hierarchical order
in which a few are on top, and many are on the bottomﾉ
Hierarchy is providential; it's a way that God ordered the world.”
-(Interview for RACE - The Power of an Illusion)

12. How did people in 17th century America categorize themselves?
What differences mattered the most?
How important was skin color? Was is significant, incidental, or not even worth noting?
“White”, “Black”, and “Indian” were not yet key concepts of self-identity

13. Chess Pieces: What Difference Makes a Difference?
Draw the shape of your chess piece, without naming it.
Now name the chess piece. What characteristics of the piece enabled you to name it? What are the most salient features of the piece?
In two or three sentences only, describe the moves this piece can make.
In two or three sentences only, describe the advantages this piece offers to the player using it.
In relative terms to other chess pieces, how powerful is this chess piece?
How else would you describe this chess piece?
What features of your chess piece enabled you to recognize the role it plays in the game of chess?
How important was the color of the chess piece, relative to its role and power in the game of chess?
17th century Jamestown --> what were the differences that made a difference?

14. Directions: Choose 70 colonists distributed among the following occupations to settle a colony in North America. Explain the reasons for your choices in the last column.
Debriefing and follow-up questions:
ｷ Compare your list of colonists to the "original" list of settlers. Which colony would be most likely to survive, yours or that of the original settlers. Why?
ｷ Gentlemen were upper class men who did not do manual labor. Members of the Council were also gentlemen. What is the ratio of gentlemen to all other settlers in the original settlement, and by the time of the first and second supply? What are the likely consequences of this imbalance for the colony? To compare who was imported into the colony in the original, first, and second supply go to the Virtual Jamestown site at:
 or directly to 

ｷ Without laborers Jamestown could not survive. What sources of labor could the planters turn to? Ask students what they know about available sources of European, Indian and African laborers at this early time in the colony's history.

15. Indentured Servitude in Virginia
Title of your document(s):
Directions: Use only the source material your group has been given to answer as many of the following questions as possible. It is not expected that you will be able to answer all of them.
Who were the indentured servants? For what reason(s) had they come to America? What social class(es) had they occupied in Great Britain?
What was the indentured servant bound by law to provide the master?
What was the master or mistress bound by law to provide the indentured servant?
What rights of indentured servants were curtailed by colonial laws? In what ways did these laws create a second-class citizenry?
What status would the indentured servant occupy upon completion of the contract? What would the master or mistress supply the servant with upon completion of the indentures?
From the point of view of the masters, what problems arose under the system of indentured servitude? Was indentured servitude a reliable form of labor? Why or why not?
What evidence do these documents provide that the laws of Jamestown were beginning to differentiate between European, Indian and African labor?
What evidence do these documents provide that the servant class, whether European, African or Indian, found common ground with each other in their struggles against an oppressive labor system? What types of laws were passed to prevent the union of restless workers from all groups?
From the point of view of the indentured, was the indenture contract a satisfactory insurance of fair treatment in America, and did it offer a reasonable means to eventual success?
In your opinion, who was best served by the system of indenture, the master or the servant?
To make the colony profitable the planters needed an ever-growing source of labor. What were potential points of conflict between the servants and their masters?
ACTIVITY 5: The Growing Labor Crisis: Using Primary Sources about Indentured Servitude

The need for indentured servants grew as the Jamestown colony became dependent on the labor-intensive planting of tobacco. Indentured servitude was one solution to the need for labor.

This activity makes use of the following documents and secondary sources about indentured servants in Virginia:･"Indentured Servants and Transported Convicts," a secondary source available at Stratford Hall Plantation: Indenture Contract of Richard Lowther" a primary source available at Virtual Jamestown: Indenture Contract of William Buckland" at Virtual Jamestown:
 Virginia Statutes Relating to Indentured Servants" a set of five primary sources from Virtual Jamestown: the class into eight groups and give each group either one of the five Virginia statutes, one of the two Indenture Contracts, or the Stratford Hall background essay to read. (These can be viewed online or downloaded and photocopied.)

Distribute one of the forms below to every member of each group. Ask each group, insofar as possible, to answer the questions below. Explain that no one group will be able to answer all of them.

16. Defining the Status of an Indentured Servant in Jamestown
Was this person a temporary slave? A full citizen?
What were the distinctions between servant and slave?
Invite the class to make predictions about how issues of labor and social stratification will be resolved in colonial Virginia.
Ask students to re-interpret Bacon's rebellion of 1676 based on key concepts in this lesson. As the indentured class began to survive beyond the years of their indentures, they began to demand their "freedom dues" of land, corn and a gun. The planter class already occupied the coastal areas, thus the new freedmen were relegated to the backcountry of Virginia where it was hard to eke out a life. The freedmen class coveted both the prerogatives of the ruling class and the land of American Indians, and now they were armed. As Virginia Governor Berkeley complained in a moment of self-pity: "How miserable that man is that Governes a People where six parts in seven are Poore, Endebted, Discontented, and Armed."Note that Bacon's rebels - freedman, servants and slaves - burned Jamestown to the ground and forced the governor to flee.How did Bacon's war on Indians turn into a class war against the planters? How did the ruling class learn to divide and conquer the underclass that Bacon led (which included both indentured servants and African slaves) by privileging a new class of people: "whites"? For more on this interpretation of Bacon's Rebellion see Edmund S. Morgan's American Slavery, American Freedom and Theodore W. Allen's The Invention of the White Race: Volume 2. See the RACE Web site Resources section for detailed bibliographical information.

17. Jamestown Needs Laborers
Available Numbers & Longevity
Skills needed for planting & other labors
Ability to run away & escape
capture
Sources of legal, political or military recourse
Africans brought as slaves
Indians captured in war
Indentured Europeans
Directions:
Jamestown was in need of laborers. An oppressed labor force would provide the cheapest source of labor. What were the advantages or disadvantages for the planter class in trying to enslave peoples in the following categories? Fill in the chart as best you can:
What conclusions can the class reach after discussing their charts?

When discussing slavery remind students that unlike today, slavery didn't need to be justified back then. Slavery was widespread, and taken for granted throughout most of recorded human history. Historian Barbara Fields has observed that "There was no need to justify slavery in a society in which everybody stands in the relationship of inherited subordination to someone else - servant to master, serf to nobleman, vassal to overlord, overlord to kings, and king to King of kings."

18. From "Laws on Slavery"
September 17, 1630: The punishment of Hugh Davis
January 1639/40-ACT X: An act creating a legal distinction between white and black men
October 17, 1640-Punishment for a White Man and a Black Woman Who Committed Fornication
March 1655/6-ACT I: An act creating a distinction between Africans and Native Americans
March 1660/1-ACT XXII: An act punishing English servants running away with Negroes
March 1661/2-ACT CII: An act discouraging white indentured servants from running away with enslaved blacks
March 1661/2-ACT CV: An act prohibiting trading among servants and slaves
March 1661/2-ACT CXXXVIII: An act stating that Native American and English servants were to serve their masters the same length of time
March 1661/2: A ruling providing freedom for a Native American slave
December 1662-ACT XII: An act applying the status of the mother on children
September 1663-ACT XVIII: An act prohibiting servants from traveling without a license
September 1667-ACT III: An act declaring that baptism did not alter the status of slaves
September 1668-ACT VII: An act declaring that Negro women were taxable
October 1669-ACT I: An act legalizing the punishment and killing of slaves
October 1670-ACT XII: An act creating further additional distinction between African Americans and Native Americans
September 1672-ACT VIII: An act to suppress the rebellious activities of slaves
June 1676-ACT I: An act declaring Indians captured in war slaves for life
[Bacon's Rebellion]
June 1680-ACT X: An act attempting to prevent slave revolts
November 1682-ACT I: An act repealing a former law making Indians and others free
April 1691-ACT XVI: An act attempting to suppress runaway slave communities
[The term "white" appears]
April 1692-ACT III: An act stating the procedure for a slave brought to trial for a capital offense
August 1701-ACT II: An act that offered a reward for the apprehension of a notorious runaway slave
October 1705-CHAP. IV: An act that contains the first definition of a mulatto in Virginia's laws
October 1705-CHAP. XXII: An act declaring the Negro, Mulatto, and Indian slaves real estate
October 1705-CHAP. XXIV: An act for settling the Militia
October 1705-CHAP. XLIX: An act that provides a definition of who would become a slave upon entering Virginia

19. Revisionism
We usually look at the story of colonial America as a series of steps toward freedom.
Is there a different story: that American democracy did not become possible for Americans of European descent until they had enslaved Americans of African descent and justified that action by deeming them a separate and inferior race.
To help students better understand the "steps toward race" you may want to develop with them further the chess analogy begun in Activity 2. Ask students to suppose that all the lowly pawns are black, and all the other pieces are white, save for an occasional black knight. 

Then laws are issued which limit the freedom of the black pawns - they are slaves. Because all slaves happen to be black, color becomes associated with supremacy or inferiority. White chess pieces, even those which might have once been pawns themselves, would thus feel they have more to gain by seeing themselves as white than they do in making common cause with their former black counterparts against the aristocracy. The story the white pieces tell themselves to justify this situation is not that the white pieces are greedy and want to control the labor of the pawns, but that the black pieces are inherently inferior and unfit for freedom. Color, rather than shape, has become the difference that makes the difference

Ask students what would happen if you introduced gray pieces into this game. Are they classified as white or black? Or do we make new rules that define their powers? What would be in the interest of the white aristocracy? Would they wish to define all gray pieces as black so as to maximize the numbers of the enslaved? Why would it now be imperative to define the status of gray?

Discuss with students the uses and misuses of this analogy. What about it seems most apt? What aspects of the imagined chess analogy do students think may be faulty?

20. Definition of Race
The term race or racial group usually refers to the categorization of humans into populations or groups on the basis of various sets of heritable characteristics and self-identification
Some argue that although race is a valid taxonomic concept in other species, it cannot be applied to humans.[5] Many scientists have argued that race definitions are imprecise, arbitrary, derived from custom, have many exceptions, have many gradations, and that the numbers of races delineated vary according to the culture making the racial distinctions; thus they reject the notion that any definition of race pertaining to humans can have taxonomic rigour and validity.
A social construction (or social construct) is any phenomenon 'invented' or 'constructed' by participants in a particular culture or society, existing because people agree to behave as if it exists or follow certain conventional rules. One example of a social construct is social status. Another example of social construction is the use of money, which is worth anything only because society has agreed to treat it as valuable
Better for people to use the term populations (to study genetic differences for example)
Biological definitions of race (Long & Kittles, 2003) et al. ConceptReferenceDefinitionEssentialistHooton (1926)"A great division of mankind, characterized as a group by the sharing of a certain combination of features, which have been derived from their common descent, and constitute a vague physical background, usually more or less obscured by individual variations, and realized best in a composite picture."TaxonomicMayr (1969)"An aggregate of phenotypically similar populations of a species, inhabiting a geographic subdivision of the range of a species, and differing taxonomically from other populations of the species."PopulationDobzhansky (1970)"Races are genetically distinct Mendelian populations. They are neither individuals nor particular genotypes, they consist of individuals who differ genetically among themselves."LineageTempleton (1998)"A subspecies (race) is a distinct evolutionary lineage within a species. This definition requires that a subspecies be genetically differentiated due to barriers to genetic exchange that have persisted for long periods of time; that is, the subspecies must have historical continuity in addition to current genetic differentiation."

21. W.E.B. DuBois
“for the problem of the Twentieth Century is the problem of the color-line”
W.E.B. Du Bois said, on the launch of his groundbreaking 1903 treatise The Souls of Black Folk, “for the problem of the Twentieth Century is the problem of the color-line”—a prescient statement. Setting out to show to the reader “the strange meaning of being black here in the dawning of the Twentieth Century,” Du Bois explains the meaning of the emancipation, and its effect, and his views on the role of the leaders of his race.
Has the problem been solved, or is the problem of the 21st Century still the color line? What is the problem of the 21st Century?
What is the problem of the 21st Century?

22. Why did the planter class turn to African slavery?
What categories were more important than skin color in defining status in early colonial America?
Why did the planter class turn to African slavery?
What advantages did the enslavement of Africans provide the planter class?
What advantages did the enslavement of Africans provide the indentured European class?
What role did the law play in creating the permanent enslavement of Africans?
As the idea of race evolved, what presumptions were made about American Indians?
What do Europeans seeking land have to gain by turning Indians (who were previously hunters, gatherers and/or part time farmers) into more "civilized" full-time planters?
To profit from their venture in North America, the European settlers needed both land and the labor to work the land. Captured Indian land provided the first, and captured African labor would eventually supply the latter. According to what rules or principles would Europeans classify Indian-European "half-breeds," and European-African "mulattos"? How much "Indian blood" did you need to remain Indian, how little to be deemed white? How much "black blood" was required to remain Black? How could these designations be manipulated such as to create both a greater source of labor, and diminished resistance to the acquisition of native land?