1. Black People in Colonial
Chapter 3
Black People in Colonial
North America,

2. Bacon’s Rebellion, 1676 (p. 79) Uprising against colonial elites
Demand for land and resources by white indentured servants
Class-based with a biracial alliance
Led to less use of white indentured servants and more dependence on black slaves

3. III. Plantation Slavery, 1700-1750 (p. 81)
The Slavery of Roots
Tobacco ~ Chesapeake
Increased demands for labor and slaves
Racial prejudice exists
Fewer white indentured servants available
More Africans available
Fear of class conflict (coming off Bacon’s Rebellion)

4. Plantation Slavery, 1700-1750 (cont.)
Rice ~ Low-Country
Early settlers were immigrants from Barbados who brought slaves with them
Never any black indentured servants
Enslaved more Indians than other British colonies
West Africans experienced at cultivating rice

5. Plantation Slavery, 1700-1750 (cont.)
Race relations
White fears of revolt (outnumbered by Blacks)
Est. Slave Code
Carolina had strictest in North America in 1698
Watch patrols
Curfew
Task system
Permitted autonomy without white supervision
Able to preserve more of their African heritage due to more free time

6. “View of Mulberry Street”
Thomas Coram, “View of Mulberry Street, (House and Street),” About 1770, Thomas Coram painted the slave quarters and the master’s house at Mulberry Plantation, located near Charleston, South Carolina. The slave cabins with their high-pitched roofs were influenced by West African architecture.
SOURCE: Oil on paper, 10 x 17.6 cm, Gibbes Museum of Art, Carolina Art Association.

7. Slave Life in Early America (p. 85)
Minimal housing
Dress
Men wore breechcloths (like KK/Toby in Roots)
Women wore skirts
Upper bodies bare (initially)
Children naked until puberty
Heritage and culture
Slave women used dyes made from bark
Decorated cloth with ornaments
Created African-style head-wraps, hats, and hairstyles

8. IV. Miscegenation and Creolization (p. 87)
Early Chesapeake had much interaction
Africans, American Indians, White Indentured servants
Cultural exchanges part of Creolization and creation of African American children
Miscegenation – interracial sexual contacts
Extensive in British North America in 17th and 18th centuries, though less accepted than in other European colonies
British North America had many more white women
Interracial marriages banned by colonial assemblies
Kept white women from having mulatto children
Prevented a legally-recognized mixed-race class

9. V. The Origins of African-American Culture (p. 88)
Creolization and miscegenation
Created African Americans
Retained a generalized West African heritage
Family structure
Kinship
Religious ideas
African words
Musical instruments
Cooking and foods
Folk literature
Folk arts

10. African Mbanza
This photograph depicts two versions of the African mbanza. They feature leather stretched across a gourd, a wooden neck, and strings made of animal gut. In America, such instruments became known as banjos.

11. South Carolina Plantation
This eighteenth-century painting of slaves on a South Carolina plantation provides graphic proof of the continuities between West African culture and the emerging culture of African Americans. The religious dance, the drum and banjo, and elements of the participants’ clothing are all West African in origin.
SOURCE: Abby Aldrich, Rockefeller Folk Art Museum, Williamsburg, VA.

12. The Origins of African-American Culture (cont.)
The Great Awakening (p. 90)
Began process of converting African Americans to Christianity
Evangelical churches welcomed black people
Increased black acculturation
Biracial churches
Segregation and discrimination

13. George Whitefield
George Whitefield, a founder of the Methodist Church and an emotional preacher, addressed black as well as white audiences during his 1739 tour of Britain’s North American colonies.
SOURCE: John Wollaston “George Whitefield” ca By courtesy of the National Portrait Gallery, London. © 2004 Artist Rights Society (ARS), New York/ADAGP, Paris.