Brazil: An Inconvenient History

Phil Grabsky, Seventh Art Productions

While everyone knows of the history of slavery in the USA, few people realize that Brazil was actually the largest participant in the slave trade. Forty percent of all slaves that survived the Atlantic crossing were destined for Brazil, while only 4 % were sent to the U.S. At one time half of the population of Brazil were slaves. It was the last country to officially abolish slavery (1888) and one of the ex-slaves is still alive today.

This well- researched BBC production charts Brazil's history using original texts, letters, accounts and decrees. From these original sources, we learn firsthand about the brutality of the slave traders and slave owners, and the hardship of plantation life. With the Portugese colony of Angola acting as a "factory" supplying Africans to Brazil, it was cheaper to replace any slave starved and worked to death than to extend his life by treating him humanely. Few plantation owners sent for their wives to live in this hot climate, so the softening effect of family life was absent among the rough white settlers.

Historians Joao Jose Reis, Cya Teixeira, Marilene Rosa Da Silva, anthropologist Peter Fry, and others recount the effect of centuries of slavery on Brazil today.This is an important documentary for Black history, African history and Latin American studies.

Brazilian Slavery An Inconvenient Portuguese History PT.1

Brazilian Slavery An Inconvenient Portuguese History PT.2

Brazilian Slavery An Inconvenient Portuguese History PT.3


Brazilian Slavery An Inconvenient Portuguese History PT.4


Brazilian Slavery An Inconvenient Portuguese History PT.5

Fort Jesus

Enslaving in the sweet name of Jesus. "In 1498 the Portuguese explorer Vasco De Gama arrived in Mombasa on his route to India. Fort Jesus was built after the Portuguese had been masters of the East African coast for nearly an hundred years. During this time they had as main base an unfortified factory at Malindi."

Fort Jesus, located on the edge of a coral ridge overlooking the entrance to the Old Port of Mombasa, was built by the Portuguese in 1593-1596 to protect their trade route to India and their interests in East Africa. It was designed by an Italian architect, Giovanni Battista Cairati*. Mombasa became Portugal’s main trading centre along the East Coast of Africa.

• Portuguese: 11 Apr. 1593 Fortaleza de Jesus - 15 Aug. 1631

• Sultan of Mombasa: 15/16 Aug. 1631 - 16 May 1632

• Abandoned: 16 May 1632 - 5 Aug. 1632

• Portuguese: 5 Aug 1632 - 13 Dec. 1698

• Oman: 13 Dec. 1698 - Mar. 1728

• Portuguese: 16 Mar. 1728 - 26 Nov. 1729

• Oman: Nov. 1729 - 1741

• Governor of Mombasa: 1741 - 1747

• Oman: 1747

• Governor of Mombasa: 1747 - 1828 (English protection 1824-1826)

• Oman: 1828

• Governor of Mombasa: 1828 - 1837

• Oman: 1837 - 1856

• Zanzibar: 1856 - 1895

• English: 1895 - 1963

Portugal in the World - Mozambique Island

7 Wonders Travel

The wonders of Portugal in the World - Mozambique Island

On the voyage by Portuguese wonders in the world back to Africa, to Mozambique Island. This was the last stopover of Vasco da Gama before arriving in India, and the island has given the country its name. Due to the rich history it holds, the Island of Mozambique was considered by UNESCO World Heritage Site. 2009-05-21 15:33:33

As Maravilhas de Portugal no Mundo - Ilha de Moçambique @ RTP 2009

Nigger Head Tobacco

Nigger Head Smoking Tobacco

Wh. S. Kimball & Company

"Dis 'Nigger Head' am de crack shot! Yah! Yah!Yah!"

Clinging to Mammy: Our Relationship with Slavery

Clinging to Mammy: Our Relationship with Slavery

October 21, 2007

Micki McElya professor, American studies, University of Alabama

Micki McElya, professor of American studies at the University of Alabama examines why we cling to the notion of "mammy." She argues that the figure of the loyal slave has played a powerful role in modern American politics and culture. Stories of faithful slaves expose the power and reach of the myth, not only in popular advertising, films, and literature about the South, but also in national monument proposals, child custody cases, New Negro activism, anti-lynching campaigns, and the civil rights movement. If we are to reckon with the continuing legacy of slavery in the United States, McElya argues, we must confront the depths of our desire for mammy and recognize its full racial implications.

Slave Ship Jesus

Slave Ship Jesus Coat of Arms

Slavery is a stain on the history of the British Empire. The Anglo-Saxons kept slaves, but although serfdom survived for many years, slavery had all but gone from England by the 12th century. Certainly the earliest colonies, the West Indies and Virginia could not have survived without slaves.

The British were not the first Europeans in the slave trade. The Portuguese had established themselves as traders a century earlier.

Our story, here in the sixteenth century, centres on three voyages of John Hawkins. Hawkins was the first established English slave trader. Between 1562 and 1567 he made such profits so lucrative that he was supported by the Queen who showed her investment by donating two of her own ships, the Jesus of Lubeck and the Minion.

The pattern was consistent. Hawkins sailed for the west coast of Africa and, sometimes with the help of other African natives, kidnapped villagers. He would then cross the Atlantic and sell his cargo, or those who survived the voyage, to the Spanish. The slave trade was better business than plantations.

Sir John Hawkins

For Hawkins, the trade ended in 1567 when his fleet, which included a ship commanded by Francis Drake, took shelter from a hurricane in the Gulf of Mexico. The Spanish were also there. In the chaos and fight that followed, many of his men were killed. The Queen's Jesus of Lubeck was lost. Hawkins escaped in one ship and Drake in another. He'd lost 325 men on that voyage but it still showed a financial profit.

That skirmish between the Spanish and English ships was partly a turning point in the naval confrontation between the two nations; it continued for two decades and was only partially settled by the 1588 English Channel battle with the Spanish Armada. However, slavery continued after Hawkins and, although banned in England in 1772, it continued in the colonies until the 19th century. (source: BBC)

Slave Ship Jesus of Lubeck

JESUS OF LUBECK

The Jesus Of Lubeck was a German-built carrack of 700 tons displacement built around 1544 as a Hanseatic trading ship, before being bought by Henry VIII of England and converted to a warship. In 1564 she was leased as an armed slave-ship to Captain John Hawkins who used her until she was sunk during an engagement with the Spanish at San Juan de Ulloa in the Gulf of Mexico.

The Jesus Of Lubeck had four masts, the fore and main masts were square-rigged, the mizzens lateen rigged, carried a crew of 300 and was armed with 26 guns. (source: probertencyclopaedia.com

"The Floating Dungeon: A History of the Slave Ship"

The Slave Ship: A Human History

The missing link in the chain of American slavery

For more than three centuries slave ships carried millions of people from the coasts of Africa across the Atlantic to the New World. Much is known of the slave trade and the American plantation complex, but little of the ships that made it all possible. In The Slave Ship, award-winning historian Marcus Rediker draws on thirty years of research in maritime archives to create an unprecedented history of these vessels and the human drama acted out on their rolling decks. He reconstructs in chilling detail the lives, deaths, and terrors of captains, sailors, and the enslaved aboard a “floating dungeon” trailed by sharks. From the young African kidnapped from his village and sold to the slaver by a neighboring tribe; to the would-be priest who takes a job as a sailor on a slave ship only to be horrified by the evil he sees; to the captain who relishes having “a hell of my own,” Rediker illuminates the lives of people who were thought to have left no trace.

This is a tale of tragedy and terror, but also an epic of resilience, survival, and the creation of something entirely new, something that could only be called African-American. Marcus Rediker restores the slave ship to its rightful place alongside the plantation as a formative institution of slavery, as a place where a profound and still haunting history of race, class, and modern capitalism was made.

Watch video of Marcus Rediker, professor of history at the University of Pittsburgh, speaking on "The Floating Dungeon: A History of the Slave Ship" at the Vanderbilt Law School March 10, 2009.

Internal Slave Trade, U.S., ca. 1830

Source
Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division, LC-USZ62-89701

Comments
An engraving, captioned "United States Slave Trade. 1830" which shows slaves in shackles, whites holding whips; capital dome in Washington, D.C. is in background. The Library of Congress notes for this illustration indicate it was an abolitionist print, "possibly engraved in 1830; more details on its origin are also given in the Prints and Photographs Online Catalog.

Slave Coffle, Virginia, 1839

Slave Coffle, Virginia, 1839

Source

James Buckingham, The Slave States of America (London, 1842), vol. 2, facing p. 553. (Copy in Special Collections Department, University of Virginia Library)

Comments

Caption, "Gang of Slaves journeying to be sold in a Southern Market"; illustrates the domestic slave trade in the U.S. James Buckingham viewed this scene in September, 1839, a few miles from Fredericksburg. "It was in a valley ," he wrote, "that we met a gang of slaves, including men, women, and children, the men chained together in pairs, and the women carrying the children and bundles on their march to the south.

The gang was under several white drivers, who rode near them on horseback, with large whips, while the slaves marched on foot beside them; and there was one driver behind, to bring up the rear . . . . They were chained together for precaution, rather than punishment; because when accompanied by one or two white men . . . they might be tempted to rise against them in any solitary part of the road, or, at the very least, escape from them if they could. . . " (pp. 552-553). Secondary sources which reproduce this image sometimes, without citing the original source, caption this "crossing the Rapidan" river, but the author does not identify the body of water shown in the illustration; moreover, given the route that he describes having taken, it is unlikely it was the Rapidan

Slave Coffle, Near Paris, Kentucky, 1850s

Slave Coffle, Near Paris, Kentucky, 1850s

Source
Anon., The Suppressed Book About Slavery! Prepared for Publication in 1857 (New York, 1864), facing p. 49. (Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division, LC-USZ62-30798)

Comments
Caption, "The Coffle Gang"; led by white on horseback and black musicians at the front. An eye-witness account of the scene depicted in this illustration is given on pp. 164-65 of this abolitionist book; the scene described is of "about forty men, all chained together. . . . Behind them were about thirty women, in double rank, the couples tied hand to hand...."

Slave Coffle, Washington, D.C., ca. 1819

Slave Coffle, Washington, D.C., ca. 1819

Wood engraving, captioned "A Slave-Coffle passing the Capital" and depicting slaves wearing handcuffs and shackles passing the U.S. Capital, meant to depict a scene ca. 1819.

This image was intended to illustrate part of a debate in the U.S. House of Representatives in 1819, concerning the admission of Missouri to the Union. The representative from New York, James Tallmadge, Jr., proposed that as a condition of admission slavery not be permitted in Missouri "except of those already held as slaves."

While the debate was going on, Tallmadge pointed out that the South wanted Missouri to be a slave state and that a "striking illustration of what the South" wanted was to be viewed at that moment in front of the Capital. Apparently, as the debate was in progress "a trafficker in human flesh . . . has passed the door of your Capital . . . driving before him about fifteen of these wretched victims of his power. The males . . . were handcuffed and chained to each other, while the females and children were marched in their rear, under the guidance of the driver's whip" (p. 265).

Jamestown from a Dutch Man-of-War, 1619

Landing of Negroes at Jamestown from a Dutch Man-of-War, 1619

Power of Propaganda

Gator Bait Themes

 

 

Abolition of Slave Trade

MSNBC's Doll Test

This panel met at Howard University to discuss the black doll - white doll test. For those who are unfamiliar, the famous doll test was a survey taken years ago, where black school age children where asked positive and negative questions about black and white dolls. To sum things up, the kids overwhelmingly preferred the white dolls. The test was run again recently with the same results.

Panelist joining Brian Williams included: radio host Tom Joyner, author Michael Eric Dyson, entrepreneur Malaak Compton-Rock, screenwriter Kriss Turner, writer Kevin Powell, and columnist Mike Barnicle. Tim Wise, the Director of the Association for White Anti-Racist Education (AWARE) and Rev. Buster Soaries.

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

MSNBC's panel needs improvement. In that, it is understandable that MSNBC's intended to get a well rounded diverse panel to discuss race, but they missed the mark. Chris Rock's wife is not a scholar. Although she's seems to be quite active with charity work, but she needed to be a black female counterbalance to Dr. Michael Eric Dyson. There are some great black female scholars like Dr. bell hooks, Dr. Alice Walker, Dr. Toni Morrison, and Dr. Francis Cress that have written, researched, published, and presented scholarly works on black female images and popular culture.

Mike Barnacle and Brian Williams should have been required to read Toni Morrison's The Bluest Eye, before they even opened their mouths. None of the panelists have any idea how painful it is to be black, female, dark and ugly. Chris Rock's wife is too beautiful to know how painful it is to be considered ugly by society.

One more criticism on this panel. Who the hell invited the police! I guess if we're gonna talk about black folks then we need to call the cops. WTF! While I can deal with Chris Rock's wife, and Micheal Eric Dyson......the cops are just too much. It just subliminally reinforces the criminal stereotype of blackness. Negrophobia propaganda rears it's evil head once again.

Lastly, why the heck is Mike Barnacle on the panel? If MSNBC must give a white male voice, there are some excellent scholars on the subject like Eric Foner, David Bryon Davis, David Blight, et al.

If MSNBC is going to teach, then there are some great professors that do this for a living they should cast their nets a little wider for panel discussions.

Costco's Lil' Monkey Doll

Costco Wholesale Corp. on Thursday apologized to any of its customers who may have been offended by a doll the company pulled from its stores after a complaint about possible racist connotations.

The doll wore a headband that said "Lil' Monkey" and was cuddling with a stuffed monkey. The "Cuddle with Me, Doll with Plush Monkey" doll came in Caucasian, African-American and Hispanic representations.

But shortly after the toys were put up for sale in late July, Costco received a complaint from a customer in North Carolina concerning the version of the doll that showed an African-American baby with the monkey.

Costco immediately pulled the doll from its shelves and discontinued the product. The Issaquah, Wash.-based retailer said the doll was carried only in its Northeast and Southeast regions and the company's Web site and was only for sale for a matter of days before it was pulled.

A number of reports and Web sites have criticized the retailer for carrying the product, and Costco said it apologizes.

Kenneth and Mamie Clark's Doll Study

Segregation Ruled Unequal, and Therefore Unconstitutional

Kenneth B. Clark & Mamie Phipps Clark

Psychologists Kenneth and Mamie Clark Ph.d demonstrated that segregation harmed Black children's self-images. Their testimony before the Supreme Court contributed to the landmark Supreme Court case that desegregated American public schools: Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, KS

Findings

In their groundbreaking studies, Kenneth and Mamie Clark investigated black children's racial identification and preference. Using drawings and dolls of black and white children, these researchers asked Black preschool and elementary school children to indicate which drawing or doll they preferred and which drawing or doll looked most like them. They also asked children to color line drawings of children with the color that most closely matched their own skin color. The Clarks found that Black children often preferred the white doll and drawing, and frequently colored the line drawing of the child a shade lighter than their own skin. Samples of the children's responses illustrated that they viewed white as good and pretty, but black as bad and ugly.

Clark and Clark concluded that many Black children at the time (1939-1950) "indicate a clear-cut preference for white and some of them evidence emotional conflict when requested to indicate a color preference. It is clear that the Negro child, by the age of five is aware of the fact that to be colored in contemporary American society is a mark of inferior status. A child accepts as early as six, seven or eight the negative stereotypes about his own group."

Significance

Until 1954, public schools were racially segregated, meaning that Black and White children could be forced to attend different schools. A Supreme Court ruling from 1892, Plessy v. Ferguson, legitimized these children's "separate, but equal" educations. With the help of Clark and Clark's research findings, that illustrated the effect of prejudice and discrimination on personality development, the plaintiffs in Brown v. Board of Education were able to show that segregated schools were inherently unequal, and therefore unconstitutional.

Clark and Clark's research prompted several future studies about racial identification and preference among minority children.

Practical Application

The impact of their research is evident in the court's unanimous decision, as written by Chief Justice Earl Warren: "Segregation of white and colored children in public schools has a detrimental effect upon the colored children. The impact is greater when it has the sanction of law; for the policy of separating the races is usually interpreted as denoting the inferiority of the Negro group. A sense of inferiority affects the motivation of a child to learn. Segregation with the sanction of law, therefore, has the tendency to [retard] the educational and mental development of Negro children and to deprive them of some of the benefits they would receive in a racial[ly] integrated school system." In short, segregation failed to provide Black and White children equal protection under the law — a protection guaranteed by the 14th amendment. Segregation was therefore deemed unconstitutional. Chief Justice Warren noted Kenneth Clark as one of the "modern authorities" on which the decision was based. This acknowledgment was significant because it was the first time that psychological research was cited in a Supreme Court decision and because social science data was seen as paramount in the Court's decision.

source: American Psychological Association, May 28, 2003, Revised July 2007

Doll Cultural Study

Black doll White doll



The Barbie Doll Test



White Doll, Black Doll. Which one is the nice doll?

Zora Neale Hurston: TURPENTINE CAMPS

TURPENTINE
by Zora Neale Hurston

Well, I put on my shoes and I started. Going up some roads and down some others to see what Negroes do for a living. Going down one road I smelt hot rosin and looked and saw a “gum patch.” That’s a turpentine still to the outsider, but gum path (sic) to those who work them.

It was not long before I was up i (sic) the foreman’s face talking and asking to be talked-to. He was a sort of pencil-shaped brown-stained man in his forties and his name was John McFarlin. He got to telling and I got to listening until the first thing I knew I was spending the night at his house so I could “Ride the Wood” with him next morning and see for myself instead of asking him so many questions. So that left me free to ask about songs go (sic) the turpentine woods.

“No, Ma’am. they don’t make up many songs. The boys used to be pretty ad (sic) about making up songs but they don’t do that now.”

“If you don’t make up songs while you are working, don’t you all make some up round the jook?”

“Mo (sic), ”mam, its (sic) like I told you. Taint like saw-mills and such like that. Turpentine woods is kind of lonesome.”

Foreman McFarlin had me up before five o’ clock next morning. He had to wake up his camp and he always started out about 5:30 so that he had every man on the job by 6.

Turpentine Dipper

Every man took his tools, went to his task-whatever he was doing when he knocked off at 5:30 the afternoon before, he got right on it in the morning. The foreman had 18 men under him and he saw everyone in his place.

He had 5 chippers, 7 pullers and 5 dippers and a wood-chopper. All the men off to work, John McFarlin straddled his horse, got one for me and we began riding the wood. Talking about knowing his business!

Turpentine Chipper

The foreman can ride a “drift” and with a glance tell if every “face” on every tree has been chipped. First he rode a drift of virgin boxes. That is when a tree is first worked, it is a virgin box for three years. That is the finest rosin. The five men were chipping away. The chipper is the man who makes those little slanting cuts on pine trees so that the gum exudes, and drains down into the box. He has a very sharp cutting tool that heavily weighted in the handle and cunningly balanced so that he chips at a stroke. The company pays a cent a tree. We stopped and watched Lester Keller chip because he is hard to beat anywhere in the world. He often chips 700 or more trees a week.

A puller is a specialized chipper. He chips the trees when they have been worked too high for the chipper. He does this with a chipping axe with a long handle knows (sic) as a puller. The foreman explained that the tree are chipped three years and pulled three years then it is abandoned. Leroy Heath is the champ puller.

He inspected a drift that was being dipped. The men who dip take the cup off the tree, scrape out the gum with the dipping iron and put it back in place and pass on to the next face. The dippers are paid $.85 a barrel for gum and 10 barrels a week is good dipping. Dan Walker is the champ. He can dip two barrels a day.

The wood-chopper cuts wood for the still. Wood is used to fire the furnace instead of coal because the company owns millions of cords of wood for burning in trees that have been worked out.

McFarlin explained that thee(sic) is no chipping and dipping from November to March. In November they stop working the trees, scrape the faces, how(sic) and rake around the trees as a caution against fire.

The foreman gets $12.50 a week, the foreman’s house, all the firewood he wants and all the gardening space he wants. He said shyly that he would raise(sic) in wages, but feels that he will not get it. He wants to know if the Government is sending people around to make folk pay better wages. He hopes so.

Visit to Aycock & Lindsey, Turpentine Camp, Cross City, Florida

CROSS CITY: TURPENTINE CAMP

ZORA HURSTON, August 1939

Zora Neale Hurston worked for the WPA, collecting folklife and folklore from Floridians throughout the state. She is pictured here collecting music from French and Brown.

Photograph was part of a 1985 traveling exhibit called "Pursuits and Pastimes". Reproducted from the collection of the Library of Congress. Forms part of series S1606, Florida Folklife Archive, Photographs and Slides of Folk Arts, Artisans, and Performers.