THE MAKING OF AFRICAN AMERICANS IN A WHITE AMERICA

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THE MAKING OF AFRICAN AMERICANS IN A WHITE AMERICA

• CHAPTER 7

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Slavery

• US has the eighth largest Black population in the
  world
• Slavery began in 1619 with 20 Africans in
  Jamestown as indentured servants
• 1660s British colonies passed laws
• Blacks became slaves for life
• Interracial marriage was forbidden
• Children of slaves bore the status of the mother
  regardless of fathers race

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Slave Codes

• Both contemporary institutional and individual
  racism, central in todays conflicts, have their
  origins in the institution of slavery
• Legal and protected by the US Constitution as
  interpreted by the US Supreme Court
• Slavery in US rested on 5 central conditions
• Slavery was for life
• Status was inherited
• Slaves were considered mere property
• Slaves were denied rights
• Coercion was used to maintain the system

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• 1 Could not marry or meet with a free Black
• 2. Marriage between slaves not legally recognized
• 3. Slave could not legally buy or sell anything
  except by special arrangement
• 4. Slave could not possess weapons or liquor
• 5. Slave could not quarrel with or use abusive
  language toward Whites
• 6. Slave could not possess property (including
  money), except as allowed by his or her owner

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• 7. Slave could make no will, nor could he or she
  inherit anything
• 8. Slave could not make a contract or hire him or
  herself out
• 9. Slave could not leave a plantation without a
  pass noting his or her destination and time of
  return
• 10. No one, including Whites, was to teach a
  slave (and in some areas even a free Black) to
  read or write or to give a slave a book,
  including the Bible

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• 11. Slave could not gamble
• 12. Slave had to obey established curfews
• 13. Slave could not testify in court except
  against another slave
• Rules varied by state and were not always
  enforced
• Violations dealt with in a variety of ways
• Mutilation and branding
• Imprisonment was rare most were whipped
• Owner immune from prosecution for physical abuse

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• Most slaves were from Northwestern African
  societies and were diverse in
• language
• kinship systems
• economic systems
• political systems
• Slavery and its justifying ideology emerged out
  of Western Colonialism
• Ideology of slavery and the slave codes were
  invented primarily to maintain the subjugation of
  Africans

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African Americans and Africa

• Survival of African culture documented in
• Folklore
• Religion
• Language
• Music
• Afrocentric perspective
• Argues that some aspects of African culture, such
  as art forms, have so permeated Western culture
  that we mistakenly believe origins are European

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Attack on Slavery

• Slavery as an institution was vulnerable to
  outside opinion
• Abolitionists
• Whites and free Blacks who opposed slavery
• Did not believe in racial equality i.e., Abraham
  Lincoln
• Spoke out against slavery and the harm to the
  nation
• Slaves revolted
• Between 40,000 and 100,000 escaped from South
• Fugitive slave acts provided for return, even
  those who reached free states

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• Not all attempted to escape because failure meant
  death
• Resisted through passive resistance
• Feigned clumsiness or illness
• Pretended not to understand, see, or hear
• Ridiculed Whites with mocking subtle humor that
  owners did not comprehend
• Destroyed farm implements and committed similar
  acts of sabotage

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Slaverys Aftermath

• The period of reconstruction 1867-1877
• Military Governors
• Black participation in the political process
• Fifteenth Amendment ratified 1870
• The emergence of segregation laws (Jim Crow)
• Supreme court decisions and segregation
• Plessy v. Ferguson (1896)
• Williams v. Mississippi (1898)
• White primary elections

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Reparations For Slavery

• Slavery Reparation
• Refers to the act of making amends for the
  injustice of slavery
• What form should reparation take?
• An official apology
• Financial compensation
• Corporations that benefit from slavery and
  financial compensation
• Congressman John Conyers (Detroit)
• Commission to study appropriate remedies

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• Absence of an official apology angers many
  African Americans
• In 1990s, documentation emerged that private
  companies that still exist benefited from slavery
• Railroads
• Insurance Companies
• Attitudes divided along racial lines on
  government cash payments
• Most African Americans and some citizens
  disappointed by unwillingness to debate issue in
  Washington, D.C.

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The Challenge of Black Leadership

• Booker T. Washington
• Tuskegee Institute in Tuskegee, Alabama
• Politics of Accommodation
• Approach to White supremacy
• Forgo social equality until Whites saw Blacks
  were deserving
• Essential theme was compromise
• Self help and economic self determination
• Congratulated by President Grover Cleveland
• Organization became the Urban League

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• W.E.B. DuBois
• Born to a free family in Massachusetts
• First African-American to receive a Doctorate
  from Harvard
• Niagara Movement
• Racism as the problem of Whites
• Advocated the policy of the talented tenth
• Most outspoken critic of Booker T. Washington
• Organization became the NAACP

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Niagara Movement

• DuBois criticized Washingtons influence in
  Washington, D.C.
• Washingtons power being used to stifle African
  Americans who spoke out against the politics of
  accommodation
• Washington caused the transfer of funds from
  academic programs to vocational education
• Washingtons statements encouraged Whites to
  place the burden of the Blacks problems on the
  Blacks themselves

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• DuBois advocated theory of the talented tenth as
  alternative
• Privileged Blacks, 1/10th must serve the other
  9/10th of the Black population
• African American education should be academic to
  improve their positions
• Invited 29 Blacks for strategy session near
  Niagara Falls
• Encountered difficulty gaining financial support
  and recruiting of prominent people

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• National Association for the Advancement of
  Colored People (NAACP) 1909
• Consisted of Blacks and Whites
• Founded by the leaders of the Niagara Movement
• Marked the merging of White liberalism and Black
  militancy

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Reemergence of Black Protest

• World War II signaled improved economic
  conditions for Whites and Blacks
• Efforts by Blacks to contribute to the war effort
  at home hampered by discrimination
• Philip Randolph
• Threatened march on Washington in 1941
• President Roosevelt responded by issuing
  executive order
• Fair Employment Practices Commission set
  precedent for federal intervention in job
  discrimination

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• The Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) 1942
• Founded to fight discrimination with nonviolent
  direct action
• Restrictive Covenant
• A private contract entered into by neighborhood
  property owners stipulating that property could
  not be sold or rented to certain minority groups
• Declared unconstitutional in 1948
• Military desegregated by President Truman in 1948

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The Civil Rights Movement

• Desegregation of public schools.
• De jure segregation
• Segregation that results from children being
  assigned to schools specifically to maintain
  racially separate schools
• NAACP - Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka
  Kansas, and U. S. Supreme Court decision
• Marked the beginning of the Civil Rights Movement
• James Meredith (1962) University of Mississippi

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Civil Disobedience

• Based on the belief that people have the right to
  disobey the law under certain circumstances
• Widely used by Martin Luther King, Jr.
• Active non violent resistance to evil
• Win friendship and understanding of opponents
• Attack forces of evil rather than people doing
  evil
• Accept suffering without retaliation
• Refusing to hate the opponent
• Acting with the conviction that the universe is
  on the side of justice

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Urban Violence and Oppression

• Explaining Violence
• Riff-Raff/Rotten Apple Theory
• Riot participants were mostly unemployed youth
  with criminal records
• Discredited the rioters and left the barrel of
  apples, White society, untouched
• Relative Deprivation
• The conscious feeling of a negative discrepancy
  between legitimate expectations and present
  actualities
• Rising Expectations
• Refers to the increasing sense of frustration
  that legitimate needs are being blocked

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Black Power

• Born not of Black but of White violence
• Phrase frightened Whites and offended Blacks
• Black leaders feared Whites would retaliate more
  violently
• Stokely Carmichael
• Rejected the goal of assimilation in favor of
  solidarity
• Black Panther Party
• Founded by Huey Newton and Bobby Seale in
  Oakland, California in October 1966

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The Religious Force

• Black leaders emerged from the pulpits
• Churches served as the basis for community
  organization in neighborhoods abandoned by
  businesses and even government
• Religion always a source of political change and
  spiritual strength from slavery to the present
• Most African Americans are overwhelmingly
  Protestant
• The Nation of Islam, or Black Muslims, has
  attracted a large number of followers and
  received the most attention

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QUESTIONS
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• In what ways were slaves defined as property?

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• Discuss the institution of slavery based on the
  sociological perspectives of symbolic
  interaction, conflict theory, and functionalism?

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• If civil disobedience is nonviolent, why is so
  much violence associated with it?

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• Describe the importance of the conflict between
  DuBois and Washington regarding academic and
  vocational programs and what it meant for the
  future of African Americans.

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• Why has religion proved to be a force for both
  unity and disunity among African Americans?

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• Growing numbers of Blacks are immigrating to the
  United States from the Caribbean and the African
  continent. What impact may this have on what it
  means to be Black or African American in the
  United States? What would the social construction
  of race say about this development?

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• Throughout their history in America, the people
  known as African Americans today have had other
  titles of identification. They were Negroes, then
  Colored, Black during the beginning of the Civil
  Rights Movement, and now African American.
  America has many immigrants from Africa, some of
  whom are White, and can also be called African
  American. What does this mean to the descendants
  of American slaves? What title can they develop
  that will distinguish them from immigrant African
  Americans, Black or White?