I am happy to join with you today in what will go down in history as the greatest demonstration for freedom in the history of our nation.
Five score years ago, a great American, in whose symbolic shadow we stand today, signed the Emancipation Proclamation. This momentous decree came as a great beacon light of hope to millions of Negro slaves who had been seared in the flames of withering injustice. It came as a joyous daybreak to end the long night of their captivity.
But one hundred years later, the Negro still is not free. One hundred years later, the life of the Negro is still sadly crippled by the manacles of segregation and the chains of discrimination. One hundred years later, the Negro lives on a lonely island of poverty in the midst of a vast ocean of material prosperity. One hundred years later, the Negro is still languished in the corners of American society and finds himself an exile in his own land. And so we've come here today to dramatize a shameful condition.
In a sense we've come to our nation's capital to cash a check. When the architects of our republic wrote the magnificent words of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence, they were signing a promissory note to which every American was to fall heir. This note was a promise that all men, yes, black men as well as white men, would be guaranteed the "unalienable Rights" of "Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness." It is obvious today that America has defaulted on this promissory note, insofar as her citizens of color are concerned. Instead of honoring this sacred obligation, America has given the Negro people a bad check, a check which has come back marked "insufficient funds."
But we refuse to believe that the bank of justice is bankrupt. We refuse to believe that there are insufficient funds in the great vaults of opportunity of this nation. And so, we've come to cash this check, a check that will give us upon demand the riches of freedom and the security of justice.
We have also come to this hallowed spot to remind America of the fierce urgency of Now. This is no time to engage in the luxury of cooling off or to take the tranquilizing drug of gradualism. Now is the time to make real the promises of democracy. Now is the time to rise from the dark and desolate valley of segregation to the sunlit path of racial justice. Now is the time to lift our nation from the quicksands of racial injustice to the solid rock of brotherhood. Now is the time to make justice a reality for all of God's children.
Kwame Ture the man formerly known as Stokely Carmichael represents one of the most energetic voices from the Civil Rights/Black Power Movement. As we discover the history of 400 years of enslavement and the 100 years of subjugation following emancipation, certain voices like Kwame Ture from the struggle for black freedom emerge. These people were the generals in the freedom struggle. It wasn't easy. I thank them for their earnestness in times of cynicism.
Dr. Kenneth Clark: Through a strange set of circumstances, we managed to record this conversation with James Baldwin immediately after both of us attended that now-famous meeting between a group of Mr. Baldwin's friends and Attorney General Robert Kennedy. I believe much of the emotion of that historic occasion spilled over into our conversation. In an attempt to ease the tension, I started by asking him to dig back and tell us something about his childhood and his growing up.
James Baldwin: My mind is someplace else, really. But to think back on it -- I was born in Harlem, Harlem Hospital, and we grew up -- first house I remember was on Park Avenue -- which is not the American Park Avenue, or maybe it is the American Park Avenue --
Clark: Uptown Park Avenue?
Baldwin: Uptown Park Avenue, where the railroad tracks are. We used to play on the roof and in the -- I can't call it an alley -- but near the river -- it was a kind of dump, garbage dump. Those were the first scenes I remember. I remember my father had trouble keeping us alive -- there were nine of us. I was the oldest so I took care of the kids and dealt with Daddy. I understand him much better now. Part of his problem was he couldn't feed his kids, but I was a kid and I didn't know that. He was very religious, very rigid. He kept us together, I must say, and when I look back on it -- that was over 40 years ago that I was born -- when I think back on my growing up and walk that same block today, because it's still there, and think of the kids on that block now, I'm aware that something terrible has happened which is very hard to describe.
I am, in all but technical legal fact, a Southerner. My father was born in the South -- no, my mother was born in the South, and if they had waited two more seconds I might have been born in the South. But that means I was raised by families whose roots were essentially rural --
Clark: Southern rural...
Baldwin: Southern rural, and whose relation to the church was very direct, because it was the only means they had of expressing their pain and their despair. But 20 years later the moral authority which was present in the Negro Northern community when I was growing up has vanished, and people talk about progress, and I look at Harlem which I really know -- I know it like I know my hand -- and it is much worse there today than it was when I was growing up.
Clark: Would you say this is true of the schools too?
Baldwin: It is much worse in the schools.
Clark: What school did you go to?
Baldwin: I went to P.S. 24 and I went to P.S. 139. Frederick Douglass...
Clark: We are fellow alumni. I went to 139.
Baldwin: I didn't like a lot of my teachers, but I had a couple of teachers who were very nice to me -- one was a Negro teacher. You ask me these questions and I'm trying to answer you. I remember coming home from school -- you can guess how young I must have been -- and my mother asked me if my teacher was colored or white, and I said she was a little bit colored and a little bit white. But she was about your color. As a matter of fact I was right.
That's part of the dilemma of being an American Negro; that one is a little bit colored and a little bit white, and not only in physical terms but in the head and in the heart, and there are days -- this is one of them -- when you wonder what your role is in this country and what your future is in it. How, precisely, are you going to reconcile yourself to your situation here and how you are going to communicate to the vast, heedless, unthinking, cruel, white majority, that you are here? And to be here means that you can't be anywhere else.
I'm terrified at the moral apathy -- the death of the heart which is happening in my country. These people have deluded themselves for so long, that they really don't think I'm human. I base this on their conduct, not on what they say, and this means that they have become, in themselves, moral monsters. It's a terrible indictment -- I mean every word I say.
Clark: Well, we are confronted with the racial confrontation in America today. I think the pictures of dogs in the hands of human beings attacking other human beings --
Baldwin: In a free country -- in the middle of the 20th century.
Clark: In a free country. This Birmingham, clearly not restricted to Birmingham, as you so eloquently pointed out. What do you think can be done to change -- to use your term -- the moral fiber of America?
Baldwin: I think that one has got to find some way of putting the present administration of this country on the spot. One has got to force, somehow, from Washington, a moral commitment, not to the Negro people, but to the life of this country.
It doesn't matter any longer, and I'm speaking for myself, for Jimmy Baldwin, and I think I'm speaking for a great many Negroes too. It doesn't matter any longer what you do to me; you can put me in jail, you can kill me. By the time I was 17, you'd done everything that you could do to me. The problem now is, how are you going to save yourselves?
James Baldwin Interview (2 of 3)
Dr. Kenneth Clark: You mean the attorney general of the United States?
Baldwin: Mr. Robert Kennedy -- didn't know that I would have trouble convincing my nephew to go to Cuba, for example, to liberate the Cubans in defense of a government which now says it is doing everything it can do, which cannot liberate me. Now, there are 20 million people in this country, and you can't put them all in jail. I know how my nephew feels, I know how I feel, I know how the cats in the barbershop feel.
A boy last week, he was sixteen, in San Francisco, told me on television -- thank God we got him to talk -- maybe somebody thought to listen. He said, "I've got no country. I've got no flag." Now, he's only 16 years old, and I couldn't say, "you do." I don't have any evidence to prove that he does. They were tearing down his house, because San Francisco is engaging -- as most Northern cities now are engaged -- in something called urban renewal, which means moving the Negroes out. It means Negro removal, that is what it means. The federal government is an accomplice to this fact.
Now, we are talking about human beings, there's not such a thing as a monlithic wall or some abstraction called the Negro problem, these are Negro boys and girls, who at 16 and 17 don't believe the country means anything that it says and don't feel they have any place here, on the basis of the performance of the entire country.
Clark: But now, Jim --
Baldwin: Am I exaggerating?
James Baldwin Interview (3 of 3)
Clark: What do you see? Are you essentially optimistic or pessimistic, and I really don't want to put words in your mouth, because what I really want to find out is what you really believe.
Baldwin: I'm both glad and sorry you asked me that question, but I'll do my best to answer it. I can't be a pessimist because I'm alive. To be a pessimist means that you have agreed that human life is an academic matter, so I'm forced to be an optimist. I'm forced to believe that we can survive whatever we must survive. But the future of the Negro in this country is precisely as bright or as dark as the future of the country. It is entirely up to the American people and our representatives -- it is entirely up to the American people whether or not they are going to face, and deal with, and embrace this stranger whom they maligned so long.
What white people have to do, is try and find out in their own hearts why it was necessary to have a nigger in the first place, because I'm not a nigger, I'm a man, but if you think I'm a nigger, it means you need it.
The question you have got to ask yourself -- the white population of this country has got to ask itself -- North and South, because it's one country, and for a Negro, there's no difference between the North and South. There's just a difference in the way they castrate you. But the fact of the castration is the American fact. If I'm not a nigger here and you invented him, you, the white people, invented him, then you've got to find out why. And the future of the country depends on that. Whether or not it's able to ask that question.
Clark: As a Negro and as an American, I can only hope that America has the strength and the capacity --
I AM fully sensible of the greatness of that freedom, which I take with you on the present occasion ; a liberty which seemed to me scarcely allowable, when I reflected on that distinguished and dignified station in which you stand, and the almost general prejudice and prepossession, which is so prevalent in the world against those of my complexion. 1.
I suppose it is a truth too well attested to you, to need a proof here, that we are a race of beings, who have long labored under the abuse and censure of the world ; that we have long been looked upon with an eye of contempt ; and that we have long been considered rather as brutish than human, and scarcely capable of mental endowments.2.
Sir, I hope I may safely admit, in consequence of that report which hath reached me, that you are a man far less inflexible in sentiments of this nature, than many others ; that you are measurably friendly, and well disposed towards us ; and that you are willing and ready to lend your aid and assistance to our relief, from those many distresses, and numerous calamities, to which we are reduced. 3.
Now Sir, if this is founded in truth, I apprehend you will embrace every opportunity, to eradicate that train of absurd and false ideas and opinions, which so generally prevails with respect to us ; and that your sentiments are concurrent with mine, which are, that one universal Father hath given being to us all ; and that he hath not only made us all of one flesh, but that he hath also, without partiality, afforded us all the same sensations and endowed us all with the same faculties ; and that however variable we may be in society or religion, however diversified in situation or color, we are all of the same family, and stand in the same relation to him..
Sir, if these are sentiments of which you are fully persuaded, I hope you cannot but acknowledge, that it is the indispensible duty of those, who maintain for themselves the rights of human nature, and who possess the obligations of Christianity, to extend their power and influence to the relief of every part of the human race, from whatever burden or oppression they may unjustly labor under ; and this, I apprehend, a full conviction of the truth and obligation of these principles should lead all to. 4.
Sir, I have long been convinced, that if your love for yourselves, and for those inestimable laws, which preserved to you the rights of human nature, was founded on sincerity, you could not but be solicitous, that every individual, of whatever rank or distinction, might with you equally enjoy the blessings thereof ; neither could you rest satisfied short of the most active effusion of your exertions, in order to their promotion from any state of degradation, to which the unjustifiable cruelty and barbarism of men may have reduced them..
Sir, I freely and cheerfully acknowledge, that I am of the African race, and in that color which is natural to them of the deepest dye ; and it is under a sense of the most profound gratitude to the Supreme Ruler of the Universe, that I now confess to you, that I am not under that state of tyrannical thraldom, and inhuman captivity, to which too many of my brethren are doomed, but that I have abundantly tasted of the fruition of those blessings, which proceed from that free and unequalled liberty with which you are favored ; and which, I hope, you will willingly allow you have mercifully received, from the immediate hand of that Being, from whom proceedeth every good and perfect Gift. 5.
Sir, suffer me to recal to your mind that time, in which the arms and tyranny of the British crown were exerted, with every powerful effort, in order to reduce you to a state of servitude : look back, I entreat you, on the variety of dangers to which you were exposed ; reflect on that time, in which every human aid appeared unavailable, and in which even hope and fortitude wore the aspect of inability to the conflict, and you cannot but be led to a serious and grateful sense of your miraculous and providential preservation ; you cannot but acknowledge, that the present freedom and tranquility which you enjoy you have mercifully received, and that it is the peculiar blessing of Heaven.6.
This, Sir, was a time when you cleary saw into the injustice of a state of slavery, and in which you had just apprehensions of the horrors of its condition. It was now that your abhorrence thereof was so excited, that you publicly held forth this true and invaluable doctrine, which is worthy to be recorded and remembered in all succeeding ages : ``We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal ; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, and that among these are, life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.'' Here was a time, in which your tender feelings for yourselves had engaged you thus to declare, you were then impressed with proper ideas of the great violation of liberty, and the free possession of those blessings, to which you were entitled by nature ; but, Sir, how pitiable is it to reflect, that although you were so fully convinced of the benevolence of the Father of Mankind, and of his equal and impartial distribution of these rights and privileges, which he hath conferred upon them, that you should at the same time counteract his mercies, in detaining by fraud and violence so numerous a part of my brethren, under groaning captivity and cruel oppression, that you should at the same time be found guilty of that most criminal act, which you professedly detested in others, with respect to yourselves.7.
I suppose that your knowledge of the situation of my brethren, is too extensive to need a recital here ; neither shall I presume to prescribe methods by which they may be relieved, otherwise than by recommending to you and all others, to wean yourselves from those narrow prejudices which you have imbibed with respect to them, and as Job proposed to his friends, ``put your soul in their souls' stead ;'' thus shall your hearts be enlarged with kindness and benevolence towards them; and thus shall you need neither the direction of myself or others, in what manner to proceed herein. And now, Sir, although my sympathy and affection for my brethren hath caused my enlargement thus far, I ardently hope, that your candor and generosity will plead with you in my behalf, when I make known to you, that it was not originally my design ; but having taken up my pen in order to direct to you, as a present, a copy of an Almanac, which I have calculated for the succeeding year, I was unexpectedly and unavoidably led thereto.8.
This calculation is the production of my arduous study, in this my advanced stage of life ; for having long had unbounded desires to become acquainted with the secrets of nature, I have had to gratify my curiosity herein, through my own assiduous application to Astronomical Study, in which I need not recount to you the many difficulties and disadvantages, which I have had to encounter. 9.
And although I had almost declined to make my calculation for the ensuing year, in consequence of that time which I had allotted therefor, being taken up at the Federal Territory, by the request of Mr. Andrew Ellicott, yet finding myself under several engagements to Printers of this state, to whom I had communicated my design, on my return to my place of residence, I industriously applied myself thereto, which I hope I have accomplished with correctness and accuracy ; a copy of which I have taken the liberty to direct to you, and which I humbly request you will favorably receive ; and although you may have the opportunity of perusing it after its publication, yet I choose to send it to you in manuscript previous thereto, that thereby you might not only have an earlier inspection, but that you might also view it in my own hand writing.10.
And now, Sir, I shall conclude, and subscribe myself, with the most profound respect, Your most obedient humble servant, 11.
I THANK you, sincerely, for your letter of the 19th instant, and for the Almanac it contained. No body wishes more than I do, to see such proofs as you exhibit, that nature has given to our black brethren talents equal to those of the other colors of men ; and that the appearance of the want of them, is owing merely to the degraded condition of their existence, both in Africa and America. I can add with truth, that no body wishes more ardently to see a good system commenced, for raising the condition, both of their body and mind, to what it ought to be, as far as the imbecility of their present existence, and other circumstances, which cannot be neglected, will admit.
I have taken the liberty of sending your Almanac to Monsieur de Condozett, Secretary of the Academy of Sciences at Paris, and Member of the Philanthropic Society, because I considered it as a document, to which your whole color had a right for their justification, against the doubts which have been entertained of them.
I am with great esteem, Sir, Your most obedient Humble Servant, THOMAS JEFFERSON
Hundreds of thousands of African Americans were held in slavery well into the 20th Century. The untold history in America. Antoinette Harrell-genealogist/researcher and Dr. Ron Walters- Director of the African American Leadership Institute reveals their ground breaking research on slavery in the 20th Century Slavery. Listen to Mae Louise Miller a former 20th Century Slave share with the public her life experience as a slave in Mississippi.
The Declaration of Independence proclaimed America's belief in legal equality and inalienable rights. But American governments legally suspended the free will of blacks for 150 years and then denied blacks equal protection under the law for another 150 years. How did this happen in America? How were the Constitution and laws of the land twisted so as to institutionalize racism? How did it — or will it — end? In his new book Judge Andrew P. Napolitano takes a no-holds-barred look at the role of the government in the denial of freedoms on the basis of race. Juan Williams of NPR, author of Eyes on the Prize and of a biography of Thurgood Marshall, calls it "the best history of the law and race I've ever read." Damon Root and Jason Kuznicki, both of whom have written on the history of race and the law, will comment.
Coronet Films or Coronet Instructional Media Inc. produced and distributed American educational films (propaganda puff pieces). According to Wikipedia, founder David A. Smart "produced instructional short films aimed at young teenagers and high school students....." These films offered social guidance on topics such as dating, family life, courtesy and citizenship....with occasional educational topics such as the solar system and the human body."
The film "Plantation System in Southern Life" (1950) whitewashes the US slave system into a "happy darky" or "benevolent master" narrative. Jim Crow Apartheid gets a clean scrub with the neutral title of "distinct groups."
The contrast of the planter's wealth found in the homes of the planters versus the rows of small cabins that were occupied by the slaves. As you view these pictures you'll note that these slave cabins are still occupied in 1950. In other words, very little had changed in the south post-Civil War on many southern plantations 90 years after emancipation.
Plantation System in Southern Life (1950) - pt1
In Part 2, the narrator notes the three key crops that produced a vast amount of wealth, cotton, tobacco and sugar. The film asks "Did this plantation life influence the modern south? Can we find anything left of the plantation system?"
The film asserts that "freeing of the slaves" and the "great financial burden of the war disrupted the economic system of the south." But, here's the kicker as the narrator notes, that "the plantation system didn't entirely disappear." Then the narrator continues to assert that "the land remained. The source of labor, great numbers of Negroes (descendants of slaves) remained." And of course the obligatory cash crop of "cotton and the demand for cotton remained." And so the plantation system, the film summarizes, "the plantation system in its smaller and more modified way, still remained in 1950."
Most of the wealth still comes from cotton and most of the Negroes are still exploited and subjugated nearly 100 years after emancipation. It's as though time stood still in the south.
Discussion of Lydia Maria Child and the scandal of ‘amalgamation’; responses to student questions on Whitman, Lincoln, and Thoreau; antebellum racial phenotypes and pseudo-scientific racism; visual and print culture of the abolitionist movement; stages of slave narrative production; characteristics of slave narratives; background of Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin (1852) and its immense popularity and controversy; Stowe’s religion and conversion experience; James Baldwin’s famous essay on Stowe’s racial stereotyping; definition and rise of literary sentimentalism.
American Protest Literature Lecture Videos (Harvard University) from "Literature and Arts A-86: American Protest Literature from Tom Paine to Tupac"
A landmark history of African Americans in the West, In Search of the Racial Frontier rescues the collective American consciousness from thinking solely of European pioneers when considering the exploration, settling, & conquest of the territory west of the Mississippi. From its surprising discussions of groups of African Americans wholly absorbed into Native American culture to illustrating how the largely forgotten role of blacks in the West helped contribute to everything from the Brown vs. Board of Education desegregation ruling to the rise of the Black Panther Party, Quintard Taylor fills a major void in American history & reminds us that the African American experience is unlimited by region or social status.
Description: This boy, nicknamed Cupid, was originally of the Nyoro tribe. He had been captured in the Kingdom of Bunyoro, in the far northwest of present-day Uganda near Lake Albert. During this period the Kingdom of Bunyoro was often at war with the Kingdom of Buganda to the south, and captured people were often sold to the Arab slavers in exchange for cloth and metal goods. After being marched over 1300 km to the coast of Tanzania, possibly to Bagamoyo, the boy was sold again and given the Moslem name of Mabruk. It appears that he was placed on a dhow for shipment to either Zanzibar, Madagascar or Arabia. The dhow was intercepted by HMS 'Daphne' in 1868 and Mabruk was employed by the Royal Navy. Mabruk became an officer's servant on board HMS 'Dryad' and was in Mauritius where this photograph was taken around 1870. There is no indication of Mabruk's age, though he may have been around nineteen at this time. There is a forty-year-old ex-slave from East Africa by the name Mabruk, who appears in the 1891 census as a coal trimmer on board the P&O vessel SS 'Java' in the port of London. Although it is impossible to be sure that this is the same man, it was common for ex-slaves who had been employed in the Royal Navy to later seek employment in the merchant navy. Creator: Unknown Date: 1870 Credit line: National Maritime Museum, London
Wednesday, August 5, 2009
Indian Ocean: East African slaves taken aboard the Dutch HMSDaphne from a Arab dhow, 1 November 1868.
Carl Westmoreland looks over the jail used to hold slaves. (Photo by Patrick Reddy/The Cincinnati Enquier) Jake Thamann climbs along the side of a jail used to hold slaves as he takes measurements of the building. (Photo by Patrick Reddy/The Cincinnati Enquirer) Timberframes Limited out of Hamilton, Ohio took down and reconstructed this period slave pen. (Photo by Steven M. Herppich/The Cincinnati Enquier) Job superintendent Ben Nwankwo talks with timber framers D.J. Gaker and Mike Goldberg during the reconstruction of a period slave pen at the National Underground Railroad Freedom Center. (Photo by Steven M. Herppich/The Cincinnati Enquier) An eye ring, secured through a floor joist on a spike, was used to hold a chain to which a slave’s shackles were attached. The rings were in each of the joists along the center of the room; a chain was passed through the eye rings and each slave was chained to a central chain. (Photo by Patrick Reddy/The Cincinnati Enquirer)
A conceptual drawing shows the restored slave pen in the Freedom Center’s second-level atrium. (Submitted to The Cincinnati Enquier)
Professor David W. Blight is an expert on the US Civil War. He discusses how Americans differ in their perception of the war. Will this change in the presence of an African-American president? How will the commemoration of the 150th anniversary of the war differ from the 100th anniversary in 1961?
David W. Blight is a Yale University professor, author of Race and Reunion: The Civil War in American Memory (2001), and Director, Gilder Lehrman Center for the Study of Slavery, Resistance, and Abolition at Yale University.
Professor: David W. Blight, Class of 1954 Professor of American History, Yale University
Description:
This course will explore the causes, course, and consequences of the American Civil War, from the 1840s to 1877. The primary goal of the course is to understand the multiple meanings of a transforming event in American history. Those meanings may be defined in many ways: national, sectional, racial, constitutional, individual, social, intellectual, or moral. We will especially examine four broad themes: the crisis of union and disunion in an expanding republic; slavery, race, and emancipation as national problem, personal experience, and social process; the experience of modern, total war for individuals and society; and the political and social challenges of Reconstruction. The course attempts, in several ways, to understand the interrelationships between regional, national, and African-American history. And finally, we hope to probe the depths of why the Civil War era has a unique hold on the American historical imagination.
We are using two anthologies of documents (Gienapp and Johnson). Teaching Assistants will have discretion in assigning particular documents for each week's sections, and many such documents will be especially important for use in paper assignments. James McPherson'sBattle Cry of Freedom: The Civil War Erais provided largely as background reading. For further background reading on the post-war period you may want to consult David W. Blight,Race and Reunion: The Civil War In American Memory.
There will be two required papers of 5-6 pages each. Choices of topics and readings will be provided in each of two broad categories or sections of the course: 1) antebellum society and Civil War causation; and, 2) the military, political, and social meanings of the Civil War itself. The challenges, accomplishments, and failures of the Reconstruction era will be a significant part of a scheduled, final examination during finals week.
Grading:
Paper 1: 30% Paper 2: 30% Final exam: 30% Discussion section attendance and participation: 10% Yale University
If you can't attend an Ivy League University, why not learn vicariously from your computer. Here we present the Yale University Course on the Civil War Era with Professor Blight.
1. Introductions: Why Does the Civil War Era Have a Hold on American Historical The Civil War and Reconstruction (HIST 119)
Professor Blight offers an introduction to the course. He summarizes some of the course readings, and discusses the organization of the course is discussed. Professor Blight offers some thoughts on the nature of history and the study of history, before moving into a discussion of the reasons for Americans' enduring fascination with the Civil War. The reasons include: the human passion for epics, Americans' fondness for redemption narratives, the Civil War as a moment of "racial reckoning," the fascination with loss and lost causes, interest in military history, and the search for the origins of the modern United States.
2. Southern Society: Slavery, King Cotton, and Antebellum America's "Peculiar" Region The Civil War and Reconstruction (HIST 119)
Professor Blight offers a number of approaches to the question of southern distinctiveness. The lecture offers a survey of that manner in which commentators--American, foreign, northern, and southern--have sought to make sense of the nature of southern society and southern history. The lecture analyzes the society and culture of the Old South, with special emphasis on the aspects of southern life that made the region distinct from the antebellum North. The most lasting and influential sources of Old South distinctiveness, Blight suggests, were that society's anti-modernism, its emphasis on honor, and the booming slave economy that developed in the South from the 1820s to the 1860s.
3. A Southern World View: The Old South and Proslavery Ideology The Civil War and Reconstruction (HIST 119)
Professor Blight lectures on southern slavery. He makes a case for viewing the U.S. South as one of the five true "slave societies" in world history. He discusses the internal slave trade that moved thousands of slaves from the eastern seaboard to the cotton states of the Southwest between 1820 and 1860. Professor Blight then sketches the contents of the pro-slavery argument, including its biblical, historical, economic, cynical, and utopian aspects.
4. A Northern World View: Yankee Society, Antislavery Ideology and the Abolition Movement The Civil War and Reconstruction (HIST 119)
Having finished with slavery and the pro-slavery argument, Professor Blight heads North today. The majority of the lecture deals with the rise of the Market Revolution in the North, in the 1820s, 1830s, and 1840s. Blight first describes the causes of the Market Revolution--the rise of capital, a transportation revolution--and then moves to its effects on the culture and consciousness of antebellum northerners. Among these effects were a riotous optimism mixed with a deep-rooted fear of change, an embrace of the notions of progress and Manifest Destiny, and the intensification of the divides between North and South.
5. Telling a Free Story: Fugitive Slaves and the Underground Railroad in Myth and Reality The Civil War and Reconstruction (HIST 119)
Professor Blight discusses the rise of abolitionism. Blight begins with an introduction to the genre of slave narratives, with particular attention to Frederick Douglass' 1845 narrative. The lecture then moves on to discuss the culture in which antebellum reform grew--the factors that encouraged its growth, as well as those that retarded it. Professor Blight then describes the movement towards radical abolitionism, stopping briefly on colonization and gradualism before introducing the character and ideology of William Lloyd Garrison.
6. Expansion and Slavery: Legacies of the Mexican War and the Compromise of 1850 The Civil War and Reconstruction (HIST 119)
In this lecture, Professor Blight discusses some of the conflicts, controversies, and compromises that led up to the Civil War. After analyzing Frederick Douglass's 1852 Fourth of July speech and the inherent conflict between American slavery and American freedom, the lecture moves into a lengthy discussion of the war with Mexico in the 1840s. Professor Blight explains why northerners and southerners made "such a fuss" over the issue of slavery's expansion into the western territories. The lecture ends with the crisis over California's admission to statehood and the Compromise of 1850.
7. "A Hell of a Storm": The Kansas-Nebraska Act and the Birth of the Republican Party, 1854-55 The Civil War and Reconstruction (HIST 119)
Professor Blight narrates some of the important political crises of the 1850s. The lecture begins with an account of the Compromise of 1850, the swan song of the great congressional triumvirate--Henry Clay, Daniel Webster, and John C. Calhoun. The lecture then describes northern opposition to the Fugitive Slave Act passed as part of the Compromise, and the publication of Harriet Beecher Stowe's classic Uncle Tom's Cabin in 1852. Professor Blight then introduces the Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854, the most pivotal political event of the decade, and the catalyst for the birth of the Republican party.
8. Dred Scott, Bleeding Kansas, and the Impending Crisis of the Union, 1855-58 The Civil War and Reconstruction (HIST 119)
Professor Blight continues his march through the political events of the 1850s. Blight continues his description of the aftermath of the Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854, describing the guerilla war that reigned in the territory of Kansas for much of 1856. The lecture continues, describing the caning of Senator Charles Sumner on the floor of the US Senate and the birth of the Republican party. The lecture concludes with the near-victory of Republican candidate John C. Fremont in the presidential election of 1856, and the passage of the Dred Scott decision in 1857.
9. John Brown's Holy War: Terrorist or Heroic Revolutionary? The Civil War and Reconstruction (HIST 119)
Professor Blight narrates the momentous events of 1857, 1858, and 1859. The lecture opens with an analysis of the famous Lincoln-Douglas debates of 1858. Next, Blight analyzes the Dred Scott decision and discusses what it meant for northerners--particularly African Americans--to live in "the land of the Dred Scott decision." The lecture then shifts to John Brown. Professor Blight begins by discussing the way that John Brown has been remembered in art and literature, and then offers a summary of Brown's life, closing with his raid on Harpers Ferry in October of 1859.
10. The Election of 1860 and the Secession Crisis The Civil War and Reconstruction (HIST 119)
This lecture picks off where the previous one left off, with a discussion of the legacies of John Brown. The most important thing about John Brown's raid, Professor Blight argues, was not the event itself, but the way Americans engaged with it after the fact. Next, Professor Blight discusses the election of 1860, a four-way battle won by the Republican candidate, Abraham Lincoln. In the wake of Lincoln's election, the seven states of the deep South, led by South Carolina, seceded. The lecture closes with an analysis of some of the rationales underlying southern secession.
11. Slavery and State Rights, Economies and Ways of Life: What Caused the Civil War? The Civil War and Reconstruction (HIST 119)
Professor Blight begins this lecture with an attempt to answer the question "why did the South secede in 1861?" Blight offers five possible answers to this question: preservation of slavery, "the fear thesis," southern nationalism, the "agrarian thesis," and the "honor thesis." After laying out the roots of secession, Blight focuses on the historical profession, suggesting some of the ways in which historians have attempted to explain the coming of the Civil War. Blight begins with James Ford Rhodes, a highly influential amateur historian in the late 19th century, and then introduces Charles and Mary Beard, whose economic interpretations of the Civil War had their heyday in the 1920s and 1930s.
12. "And the War Came," 1861: The Sumter Crisis, Comparative Strategies The Civil War and Reconstruction (HIST 119)
After finishing with his survey of the manner in which historians have explained the coming of the Civil War, Professor Blight focuses on Fort Sumter. After months of political maneuvering, the Civil War began when Confederates fired on Fort Sumter, in the harbor outside Charleston, SC. The declaration of hostilities prompted four more states--Virginia, Tennessee, North Carolina, and Arkansas--to secede. Professor Blight closes the lecture with a brief discussion of some of the forces that motivated Americans--North and South--to go to war.
13. Terrible Swift Sword: The Period of Confederate Ascendency, 1861-1862 he Civil War and Reconstruction (HIST 119)
Professor Blight discusses the expectations, advantages, and disadvantages with which North and South entered the Civil War. Both sides, he argues, expected and desired a short, contained conflict. The northern advantages enumerated in this lecture include industrial capability, governmental stability, and a strong navy. Confederate advantages included geography and the ability to fight a defensive war. Professor Blight concludes the lecture with the Battle of Bull Run, the first major engagement of the war.
14. Never Call Retreat: Military and Political Turning Points in 1863 The Civil War and Reconstruction (HIST 119)
Professor Blight lectures on the military history of the early part of the war. Beginning with events in the West, Blight describes the Union victories at Fort Donelson and Fort Henry, introduces Union General Ulysses S. Grant, and narrates the horrific battle of Shiloh, fought in April of 1862. Moving back East, the lecture describes the Union General George McClellan's abortive 1862 Peninsula campaign, which introduced the world to Confederate General Thomas "Stonewall" Jackson. The lecture concludes with Confederate General Robert E. Lee's decision to take the battle to the North.
15. Lincoln, Leadership, and Race: Emancipation as Policy The Civil War and Reconstruction (HIST 119)
Professor Blight follows Robert E. Lee's army north into Maryland during the summer of 1862, an invasion that culminated in the Battle of Antietam, fought in September of 1862. In the wake of Antietam, Abraham Lincoln issued his preliminary Emancipation Proclamation, a document that changed the meaning of the war forever. Professor Blight suggests some of the ways in which Americans have attempted to come to grips with the enigmatic Lincoln, and argues that, in the end, it may be Lincoln's capacity for change that was his most important characteristic. The lecture concludes with the story of John Washington, a Virginia slave whose concerted action suggests the central role American slaves played in securing their own freedom.
16. Days of Jubilee: The Meanings of Emancipation and Total War The Civil War and Reconstruction (HIST 119)
This lecture focuses on the process of emancipation after the passage of the Emancipation Proclamation on January 1, 1863. The Proclamation, Professor Blight suggests, had four immediate effects: it made the Union army an army of emancipation; it encouraged slaves to strike against slavery; it committed the US to a policy of emancipation in the eyes of Europe; and it allowed African Americans to enlist in the Union Army. In the end, ten percent of Union soldiers would be African American. A number of factors, Professor Blight suggests, combined to influence the timing of emancipation in particular areas of the South, including geography, the nature of the slave society, and the proximity of the Union army.
17. Homefronts and Battlefronts: "Hard War" and the Social Impact of the Civil War The Civil War and Reconstruction (HIST 119)
Professor Blight begins his lecture with a description of the sea change in Civil War scholarship heralded by the Social History revolution of the 1960s and 1970s. Along with a focus on the experience of the common solider, women, and African Americans, a central component of this shift in scholarly emphasis was an increased interest in the effects of the war on the Union and Confederate home fronts. After suggesting some of the ways in which individual Americans experienced the war, Professor Blight moves to a discussion of the war's effect on industry and economics, North and South. The lecture concludes with a description of the increased activism of the federal government during the war, an activism that found expression in finance, agriculture, taxation, building railroads, and, most importantly, in emancipation.
18. "War So Terrible": Why the Union Won and the Confederacy Lost at Home and Abroad The Civil War and Reconstruction (HIST 119)
This lecture probes the reasons for confederate defeat and union victory. Professor Blight begins with an elucidation of the loss of will thesis, which suggests that it was a lack of conviction on the home front that assured confederate defeat, before offering another of other popular explanations for northern victory: industrial capacity, political leadership, military leadership, international diplomacy, a pre-existing political culture, and emancipation. Blight warns, however, that we cannot forget the battlefield, and, to this end, concludes his lecture with a discussion of the decisive Union victories at Gettysburg and Vicksburg in July of 1863.
19. To Appomattox and Beyond: The End of the War and a Search for Meanings The Civil War and Reconstruction (HIST 119)
Professor Blight uses Herman Melville's poem "On the Slain Collegians" to introduce the horrifying slaughter of 1864. The architect of the strategy that would eventually lead to Union victory, but at a staggering human cost, was Ulysses S. Grant, brought East to assume control of all Union armies in 1864. Professor Blight narrates the campaigns of 1864, including the Battles of the Wilderness, Spotsylvania, and Cold Harbor, and the siege of Petersburg. While Robert E. Lee battled Grant to a stalemate in Virginia, however, William Tecumseh Sherman's Union forces took Atlanta before beginning their March to the Sea, destroying Confederate morale and fighting power from the inside. Professor Blight closes his lecture with a description of the first Memorial Day, celebrated by African Americans in Charleston, SC 1865.
20. Wartime Reconstruction: Imagining the Aftermath and a Second American Republic The Civil War and Reconstruction (HIST 119)
This lecture begins with a central, if often overlooked, turning point in the Civil War--the re-election of Abraham Lincoln in 1864. Although the concerted efforts of northern Peace Democrats and a palpable war weariness among the electorate made Lincoln's victory uncertain, timely Union victories in Atlanta and Mobile in September of 1864 secured Lincoln's re-election in November. This lecture concludes Professor Blight's section on the war, following Lee and Grant to Appomattox Courthouse, and describing the surrender of Confederate forces. The nature of Reconstruction and the future of the South, however, remained open questions in April of 1865.
21. Andrew Johnson and the Radicals: A Contest over the Meaning of Reconstruction The Civil War and Reconstruction (HIST 119)
In this lecture, Professor Blight begins his engagement with Reconstruction. Reconstruction, Blight suggests, might best be understood as an extended referendum on the meaning of the Civil War. Even before the war's end, various constituencies in the North attempted to control the shape of the post-war Reconstruction of the South. In late 1863, President Abraham Lincoln offered his lenient "Ten Percent Plan." Six months later, Congressional Republicans concerned by Lincoln's charity rallied behind the more radical provisions of the Wade-Davis Bill. Despite their struggle for control over Reconstruction, Congressional Radicals and President Lincoln managed to work together on two vital pieces of Reconstruction legislation in the first months of 1865--the 13th Amendment, which outlawed slavery in the United States, and the Freedmen's Bureau bill.
22. Constitutional Crisis and Impeachment of a President The Civil War and Reconstruction (HIST 119)
Professor Blight continues his discussion of the political history of Reconstruction. The central figure in the early phase of Reconstruction was President Andrew Johnson. Under Johnson's stewardship, southern whites held constitutional conventions throughout 1865, drafting new constitutions that outlawed slavery but changed little else. When the Republican-dominated U.S. Congress reassembled late in 1865, they put a stop to Johnson's leniency and inaugurated Radical (or Congressional) Reconstruction, a process that resulted in the immediate passage of the Civil Rights bill and the Fourteenth Amendment, and the eventual passage of four Reconstruction Acts. The Congressional elections in 1866 and Johnson's disastrous "Swing Around the Circle" speaking tour strengthened Radical control over Congress. Each step of the way, Johnson did everything he could to obstruct Congressional Reconstruction, setting the stage for his impeachment in 1868.
23. Black Reconstruction in the South: The Freedpeople and the Economics of Land and Labor The Civil War and Reconstruction (HIST 119)
Professor Blight begins this lecture in Washington, where the passage of the first Reconstruction Act by Congressional Republicans radically altered the direction of Reconstruction. The Act invalidated the reconstituted Southern legislatures, establishing five military districts in the South and insisting upon black suffrage as a condition to readmission. The eventful year 1868 saw the impeachment of one president (Andrew Johnson) and the election of another (Ulysses S. Grant). Meanwhile, southern African Americans struggle to reap the promises of freedom in the face of economic disempowerment and a committed campaign of white supremacist violence.
24. Retreat from Reconstruction: The Grant Era and Paths to "Southern Redemption" The Civil War and Reconstruction (HIST 119)
This lecture opens with a discussion of the myriad moments at which historians have declared an "end" to Reconstruction, before shifting to the myth and reality of "Carpetbag rule" in the Reconstruction South. Popularized by Lost Cause apologists and biased historians, this myth suggests that the southern governments of the Reconstruction era were dominated by unscrupulous and criminal Yankees who relied on the ignorant black vote to rob and despoil the innocent South. The reality, of course, diverges widely from this image. Among other accomplishments, the Radical state governments that came into existence after 1868 made important gains in African-American rights and public education. Professor Blight closes the lecture with the passage of the 15th Amendment, the waning radicalism of the Republican party after 1870, and the rise of white political terrorism across the South.
25. The "End" of Reconstruction: Disputed Election of 1876, and the "Compromise of 1877" The Civil War and Reconstruction Era, 1845-1877 (HIST 119)
This lecture focuses on the role of white southern terrorist violence in brining about the end of Reconstruction. Professor Blight begins with an account the Colfax Massacre. Colfax, Louisiana was the sight of the largest mass murder in U.S. history, when a white mob killed dozens of African Americans in the April of 1873. Two Supreme Court decisions would do in the judicial realm what the Colfax Massacre had done in the political. On the same day as the Colfax Massacre, the Supreme Court offered a narrow reading of the 14th Amendment in the Slaughterhouse cases, signaling a judicial retreat from the radicalism of the early Reconstruction years. The Cruikshank case, two years later, would overturn the convictions of the only three men sentenced for their involvement in Colfax, and marked another step away from reconstruction. Professor Blight concludes with the Panic of 1873 and the seemingly innumerable political scandals of the Grant Administration, suggesting the manner in which these events encouraged northerners to tire of the Reconstruction experiment by the early 1870s
26. Race and Reunion: The Civil War in American Memory The Civil War and Reconstruction Era, 1845-1877 (HIST 119)
Having dealt with the role of violence and the Supreme Court in bringing about the end of Reconstruction in his last lecture, Professor Blight now turns to the role of national electoral politics, focusing in particular on the off-year Congressional election of 1874 and the Presidential election of 1876. 1874 saw the return of the Democrats to majority status in the Senate and the House of Representatives, as voters sick of corruption and hurt by the Panic of 1873 fled the Republicans in droves. According to many historians, the contested election of 1876, and the "Compromise of 1877," which followed it, marked the official end of Reconstruction. After an election tainted by fraud and violence, Republicans and Democrats brokered a deal by which Republican Rutherford B. Hayes took the White House in exchange for restoration of "home rule" for the South.
27. Legacies of the Civil War The Civil War and Reconstruction Era, 1845-1877 (HIST 119)
Professor Blight finishes his lecture series with a discussion of the legacies of the Civil War. Since the nineteenth century, Blight suggests, there have been three predominant strains of Civil War memory, which Blight defines as reconciliationist, white supremacist, and emancipationist. The war has retained a political currency throughout the years, and the ability to control the memory of the Civil War has been, and continues to be, hotly contested.
William Penn owned at least 12 slaves. During his life he gradually came around to advocating abolition, but when he died in 1718, Pennsylvania was a long way from ending the practice.
In the mid- to late 1760s, 1,500 blacks lived in slavery in Philadelphia. Statewide, there were an estimated 5,600. The number of slaves peaked in the early 1780s at 6,855, according to historian Gary B. Nash.
Among the people who owned slaves in Philadelphia were Benjamin Franklin, Benjamin Chew, John Dickinson, Thomas Cadwalader, Samuel McCall, Samuel Mifflin, Robert Morris and Edmund Physick. They are some of the most prominent ones, whose names recur in accounts of the colonial city and for whom streets and counties and institutions are named. Many of Philadelphia's slaveholders were tradesmen - barbers, brewers, sailmakers, leather workers. According to Nash, "about one-quarter of the households in the city were involved in slavekeeping in the closing years of the 1760s."
By 1790, the number for the state had fallen to 3,760. And by 1810, to 795.
"Of the states south of New England, slavery died first in Pennsylvania and it died there the fastest," write Nash and Jean Soderlund in the 1991 book, Freedom by Degrees: Emancipation in Pennsylvania and Its Aftermath.
The motivations were complicated, the authors say. Quakers had been debating the morality of slavery for a century, and the first recorded North American protest against slavery was signed by a group of Quakers in Germantown in 1688 and sent, to no immediate effect, to other Quaker groups. But moral outrage was only one factor in slavery's demise in Pennsylvania, and not always the overriding one. Economics, politics and a propensity for slaves to free themselves had a lot to do with it.
Slavery withered more rapidly in Philadelphia than in surrounding areas, in part because slaves did not live as long, nor have as many children, as they did on farms. In 1810, 94 percent of the slaves in Pennsylvania were in seven rural counties.
Slavery was even more common in neighboring states. In 1790, Delaware had 8,887 slaves, New Jersey had 11,423, and New York 21,193.
In 1779, Pennsylvania passed the first abolition law in America. The measure was praised for embodying the spirit of enlightenment at the time, but its gradual terms were no godsend.
The law did not emancipate a single slave - anyone who was a slave the last day before it went into effect March 1, 1780, remained a slave until death unless freed by his or her owner. All children born of slaves after the law took effect could be kept enslaved until age 28. So it would have been possible for a slave girl, born on the last day of February 1780, to live out her life in slavery. And for her children, theoretically born as late as 1820, to remain slaves until 1848.
Total abolition didn't come to Pennsylvania until 1847.
Why doesn't Chris Matthews know that Pennsylvania was a slave state? Pennsylvania was a slave colony, in fact ALL 13 original colonies were slave colonies. The full power of the USA government protected the system of slavery, and black subjugation after emancipation. Every branch of the government supported slavery. Pennsylvania was a slave state. Grow-up Chris Matthews and read some history of slavery in Pennsylvania. Start here with the website Slavery in the North.
The interior of a slave pen in Alexandria, Virginia, shows the cells where people were held prior to being sold.
A description of a slave pen, located half a mile from the Capitol in Washington, D.C.: "It is surrounded by a wooden paling fourteen or fifteen feet in height, with the posts outside to prevent escape and separated from the building by a space too narrow to admit of a free circulation of air. At a small window above, which was unglazed and exposed alike to the heat of summer and the cold of winter, so trying to the constitution, two or three sable faces appeared, looking out wistfully to while away the time and catch refreshing breeze; the weather being extremely hot. In this wretched hovel, all colors, except white-the only guilty one-both sexes, and all ages, are confined, exposed indiscriminately to all the contamination which may be expected in such society and under such seclusion."
Edward S. Abdy, Journal of a Residence and Tour in the United States of North America, from April, 1833, to October, 1834 (London: J. Murray, 1835).
