• Slaves were auctioned to plantation owners and businessmen from the city. They performed a variety of jobs.
Slave Codes
Slaves wore slave gs.
This slave collar was equipped with bells.
• Slaves were bound to a life of servitude.
• Slaves resisted in a number of ways: escaping, slowing down on the job, intentionally doing a job wrong, or participating in violent rebellion.
• Slaves were packed tightly on ships, shackled, and fed very little for the three- to five-month journey.
• About eighteen million Africans were transported between 1600 and 1800, and about three million died on the journey.
• The first African slaves arrived in Jamestown, Virginia, on a Portuguese ship in 1609.
• Shortly before their arrivals, slaves usually were fed better to make them look healthy.
Slavery in America
1609–1865
Origins
• Slavery has existed since the beginning of human history.
• People were enslaved for a number of reasons: they were captured in battle, they owed a debt, or they were born to slave parents.
• The penalty a slave faced for learning to read was to have his or her thumb cut off.
• These laws also made children born to slaves for life (generational slavery).
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Middle Passage
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Doorway of no return
El Mino Slave Castle Ghana
Slave Auction
Arrival in America
• Europeans originally enslaved American Indians, but after many died from diseases, they began importing African slaves who were resistant to European diseases.
• The word slave comes from the Slavic people of Eastern Europe who were conquered so often that their name became synonymous with servitude.
• Most cultures have practiced slavery in one form or another.
• One of the most famous slave revolts was in Virginia. Nat Turner led seventy other slaves to kill fiftyfive white men, women, and children. Turner and his men were later captured and hanged.
• Slaves also resisted by singing spirituals, or religious folk songs that contained coded messages.
Captured African Slave
CICERO © 2010
The ends of a whip were tipped with iron barbs.
Slaves Resisted!
Nat Turner
Reward Poster
Southern Account of Turner’s Rebellion
Middle Passage
• This was the section of the Atlantic slave trade that transported African people from Africa to slave markets in the Americas.
• It was called the Middle Passage because it was the second of the three-part triangle trade route.
A slave yolk was used to bind two slaves together.
• Slave codes were laws to control slaves.
• These codes forbid slaves from learning to read, owning firearms, or marrying a white person.