5. Surviving slavery

People may not have survived the hard labor and the violence, the domination, and the degradation of slavery had they not found ways of nurturing their spirits. Most enslaved people did not escape or engage in active rebellion; instead, they focused on living their lives, resisting when they could, exerting individual agency when possible. ‘Surviving slavery’ describes the life in enslaved communities where black people formed bonds with one another and created practices, beliefs, and rituals, all of which provided them respite and enjoyment, and helped them to survive their captivity. Many turned to Christianity, rejecting their owners' interpretation, but believing that they would be delivered from slavery.

4. Struggles for control

It took persistent effort on the part of slave owners and their allies to keep slavery in place, to make people work without pay, and to sustain the arguments that justified the forced labor of other human beings. ‘Struggles for control’ outlines the range of mechanisms deployed by white elites to gain and maintain control over enslaved people, including violence, legislation, slave patrols, religion, paternalistic demeaning behavior, and racist proslavery ideology. Enslaved people drew from a reservoir of strategies including literacy, religion, escape, malingering, and rebellion, to resist enslavement and its attendant hardships. Key influences on the enslaved were the Appeal of free man David Walker and preacher Nat Turner's 1831 rebellion in Virginia.

2. Putting slavery into place

America held promises of wealth and freedom for Europeans; in time, slavery became the key to the fulfillment of both. ‘Putting slavery into place’ describes the system of slavery initiated by European immigrants to the colonies. They chose to enslave only those who were different from them—Indians and Africans. When continued enslavement of Indians proved difficult or against colonists' self-interest, Africans and their descendants alone constituted the category of slave, and their ancestry and color came to be virtually synonymous with slave. In the mid-seventeenth century, colonists began formalizing slavery through legislation. By the 1700s black people were being held in lifelong, hereditary slavery, meaning that they and their descendants would be enslaved.

1. The Atlantic slave trade

Slavery had long existed in Europe and Africa, but the history of the Atlantic slave trade begins in the 1440s with Portuguese exploration of West Africa. ‘The Atlantic slave trade’ charts the increased demand for slave labor in Portugal and the Christian justification of African enslavement. In the 1490s, the journeys of Christopher Columbus to the Caribbean and North and South America opened up mineral-rich and fertile lands on which European countries planted their flags and the Christian cross. More than 12 million Africans boarded the ships, but nearly 2 million died during the Middle Passage. Of those who survived, only about 5 percent went to North America, with most going to South America and the Caribbean.

Epilogue

Despite the abolition of slavery with the Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution, notions of black inferiority and white supremacy still persisted in both the North and the South. The ‘Epilogue’ outlines the profound struggles by African Americans to make their freedom meaningful. In 1868, the Fourteenth Amendment granted citizenship to African Americans and promised equal protection under the law and, in 1870, the Fifteenth Amendment gave black men the right to vote. The modern civil rights movement of the 1940s, 1950s, and 1960s began to impact on the discriminatory Jim Crow laws and practices, but for many African Americans, struggles for equality, justice, and fairness continue into the twenty-first century.

6. Taking slavery apart

Slavery existed in America for nearly two hundred and fifty years until it was finally abolished with the ratification of the Thirteenth Amendment in December 1865. It took all those years and a civil war to end slavery, but ‘Taking slavery apart’ illustrates the ways that enslaved people challenged their slavery, from when it was being put into place, through when the institution matured and proved lucrative, to its final end. Through efforts to gain individual freedom by escaping, or by negotiating ways to ameliorate their enslavement, or by participating in violent uprisings, some African Americans always challenged the system that named them as property and denied them the rights of other human beings.

3. The work of slavery

‘The work of slavery’ describes the wide range of work and duties allocated to enslaved people—men, women, and children—in the North and South. From the 1600s to 1865 the vast majority worked in agriculture producing the cash crops that generated the wealth of the nation. The slave trade created mass consumer markets that traded sugarcane, sugar, rum, molasses, tobacco, indigo, coffee, rice, and cotton. Slavery also existed in urban spaces, where people worked in owner's homes and in commercial enterprises performing domestic duties or skilled work in factories and textile mills. Many enslaved people took great pride in their work—it sustained their egos and their need to have meaningful lives.