Episode Transcript
Speaker 0 00:00:00 So, uh, we're recording a couple of days late this week.
Speaker 1 00:00:03 Sorry about that. But we're here
Speaker 0 00:00:05 Like that, but actually what we really wanted to do was record a history podcast the morning of the super bowl.
Speaker 1 00:00:15 Yeah. That's what we wanted to do. So that's what we're doing.
Speaker 0 00:00:20 Yeah. Are we allowed to say the word super bowl? I know the NFL like sues the hell out of people who use it, who don't pay them
Speaker 1 00:00:25 Really. So they're like Disney. I didn't even realize that. Now we said two words that we're not allowed to say
Speaker 0 00:00:32 Superbowl and Disney. Yeah. The super bowl
Speaker 1 00:00:36 Kind of stream it. I'm not really a football watcher, but I am a food eater. So I figured I should at least the game on, as I consume the
Speaker 0 00:00:45 What's on the menu, what's the highlight
Speaker 1 00:00:47 Of the menu. Well, the kids have been really, really wanting hot dogs and like, we don't really eat a lot of bread around here. So we got like hotdogs, hotdog funds. We're doing baked beans, baked Mac and cheese, tons of different dips, guacamole, spinach, bean dip, all different types of chips. So it's a pretty, it's not like insane. Oh. And then we're doing hot wings. Of course.
Speaker 0 00:01:13 Are you doing those disgusting countertop, nachos that everybody honest
Speaker 1 00:01:17 I'm so grossed out by the top and especially during COVID right where I'm like, you know, the worst part of it.
Speaker 0 00:01:27 It is when they pour the melted nacho cheese all over it
Speaker 1 00:01:33 I'm offended because I'm like, that's not enough cheese, like the tables big and you don't have enough cheese to coat every chip, like it's purely, um, performative, you know, it's good. It's just a performance. It's a chip performance. And I, I'm not about it. I love nachos,
Speaker 0 00:01:55 But I look at it and I'm like, how many people are you feeding nachos to?
Speaker 1 00:01:59 Yeah. Well, and how many people are you feeding nachos to incorrectly? You have not put enough toppings on any of these things. You just like kind of haphazardly flinging some toppings around. I'm very offended by it.
Speaker 0 00:02:16 Uh, I have, Totonno's the freezer.
Speaker 1 00:02:19 Are you doing something for the super bowl you're doing?
Speaker 0 00:02:22 Um, I am, I am cooking some tau Tina's pizza rolls. It's a Saturday live thing that just there, they parody Totino's on it and it just cracks me up. It's kind of like the peach candle I sent you for Christmas.
Speaker 1 00:02:36 Oh yeah. I mean, I really liked Totino's pizza rolls, so
Speaker 0 00:02:39 Yeah. Totino's pizza rolls. I think I have to Tina's pizza rolls. Bagel bites.
Speaker 1 00:02:46 Yeah.
Speaker 0 00:02:47 Oh, just horrible stuff for me. Really bad. I do have stuff for nachos. I have stuff for nachos.
Speaker 1 00:02:55 Um, and I
Speaker 0 00:02:56 Think I had one other thing. Oh, I've got a taquito with guacamole. I hope all of this is going in an air fryer. Uh, almost all of it, but certainly not going on a countertop. All right. Well, um, today we're going to be talking about kind of the early history of African-Americans kind of black history as the title of the episode goes black history to 1776. Um, we kind of decided we wanted to do four special episodes during February black history month. Kind of really focusing on kind of broad contours of the black experience in America, but also bring up some kind of historical controversies and kind of issues. Um, considering kind of, uh, I th I'm approaching it kind of like a little mini course, right? A little four-part mini course. Yeah.
Speaker 1 00:03:56 It's a four part mini course, which we'll be able to use in our courses for years to come. So,
Speaker 0 00:04:00 Yeah. Cool. So, uh, well, let's get right into it. Welcome to an incomplete history. I'm Hillary and I'm Jeff. And where are your hosts for this week?
Speaker 2 00:04:12 <inaudible>
Speaker 0 00:04:34 So what's the weather like for super bowl? Sunday in Oxford, Mississippi, pretty chilly.
Speaker 1 00:04:41 I went on two walks already today and the first walk I went on, it was like low thirties. And now it's like higher 30. So cut a little sweaty on the second walk in the high thirties.
Speaker 0 00:04:53 Well, I think you'd love it here today. It's beautiful. It's sunny clear sixties right now. It'll probably warm up to the low seventies today. Nice.
Speaker 1 00:05:02 Well, your body adjusts though, because I, like, I walked outside and I just had a beanie, a sweatshirt and some pants on like, I wasn't really heavily, you know, clothed, but I'm like, Oh, this is nice out. But here in the summer, it's like 110 degrees. It's crazy how quickly your body can adjust to that though, where I'm like, Oh, 36. Lovely.
Speaker 0 00:05:24 So what would you wear if it was 36 degrees in San Diego?
Speaker 1 00:05:29 That's the thing you never your body and San Diego never adjust because the weather's always within like say 20 ish degrees. And so for me, when I lived there, if it went below 60, I wouldn't go outside.
Speaker 0 00:05:42 Well, that's the thing. If it was 36 degrees outside, it'd be like, yeah, it's a blizzard emergency. I need to stay home because
Speaker 1 00:05:51 Yeah, you're just adjusted in that way. Like I can't when in your body adjust quickly and you know, you get there and you're like, Oh no, I'm not anything below 60. I'm done. And I will say, there's something about Southern California, cold that's different. And it has to do with like the current coming down from Alaska, the water's really cold in the Pacific there. It's not really friendly for swimming in most people were right foods when they go in the ocean. And there's something about that chill that comes off the ocean that hits a little different.
Speaker 0 00:06:21 Yeah. Well,
Speaker 1 00:06:24 Six and a half minutes, not talking about we're supposed to.
Speaker 0 00:06:27 I know, but, but you know, it's, we want to ease into this except we are going to be talking about some really contentious stuff. Yeah. And I mean, off the bat, I want to say this I'm using, I mean, it's black history month and I'm going to talk about the, the distinct culture or cultures that develop amongst African-Americans as kind of black culture. And it's the way many historians who study it kind of refer to it. Um, neither Hillary and I are 100% specialist in this field, although both of our areas of research are incredibly linked with the history of African-Americans the black experience in America. True.
Speaker 1 00:07:15 Yeah. And I mean, my dissertation was the foundation of my dissertation was that the penitentiary system in the United States, um, its foundation was the system of slavery. And that was like a highly contentious claim to make. And I got a lot of pushback by a lot of different people who were very uncomfortable, making such a broad claim. And like, I think that my work, I can kind of see it, how it aligns the 16, 19 prop project, but I can also see how there were issues with it. Right. And like, I think we're going to get into a lot of that today, but so much of my work and what I study is that I think slavery is so central to the American story that it's sort of, um, it's kind of in the midst of us at all times, no matter what institution we're building or what we're doing. Um, although it may not be on everybody's lips where they're talking about slavery. I think the system itself, like the oppressive system of slavery really kind of underlies so much of American history in our institutions. So I think we differ a little bit on that and I think there's a lot to unpack there and I I've been reading a lot of the back and forth between historians because that's something that's important is like not all historians agree, right.
Speaker 0 00:08:33 Oh, I mean particularly how formatives the institution of slavery was to an American identity, its relationship with capitalism, when does slavery, as we kind of recognize it in the 19th century start all of those things. They're points of contention. And I think we're going to touch on quite a few of those over the next kind of four weeks. Yeah. Um, yeah, go ahead.
Speaker 1 00:09:05 Well, do you want to start by talking a little bit about the Atlantic slave trade in general, how it starts, what's going on there or where do you want to, where do you think is the starting point?
Speaker 0 00:09:15 I think a good starting place is to, to make a note that we know the first people who are forcibly brought from Africa to the Americas specifically to what will be the United States in the future. And it's the basis of the 60 19 projects. So in 16, 19 a boat arrives and it's carrying these people who have been kind of captured and enslaved, and they're brought to the, the, uh, to Virginia, to the Tidewater in Virginia and the slavery that they enter into the slavery that they're, they're kind of caught in is very different than the slavery that will exist a hundred years later. Is that a fair statement? Well, more than a little more than a hundred years later.
Speaker 1 00:10:09 Yes. And there are a lot of reasons for that because the slave trade and the way that slaves are treated and captured and brought to the United States or other places in the Americas, right? Like it, it shifts and changes over time. And at that point, slavery was not racialized. It wasn't a black, white binary of everybody who's black as a slave and everybody who's white is not. And that idea actually develops over the course of 100, 200 ish years. Um, as we move into the 19th century where racialized slavery becomes the norm where we think about it now, and we think, well, that was just how it was from the beginning that it was just this racialized system that will you go find people darker skin, but that's not really the case in 16, 19, although it very much becomes the case. Um, but what they enter into is very different. Yeah, you're right. There's not these massive plantations. There's not the same types of labor. Um, in 16, 19, there's not as much of an economy in the budding colonies as there is in, by the 19, you know, by the 19th century.
Speaker 0 00:11:26 So, so I think we've got kind of two strands here. First kind of, we need to talk about indentured servitude, but before that, I want to make it clear that the British aren't the first to kind of bring slaves over, even though it's an English vessel that lands these 19 or 20 African individuals and a James near Jamestown, uh, you know, an kind of slavery to the British colonies, um, the Portuguese and the Spanish had been doing it for a little while.
Speaker 1 00:12:02 Right. And the other thing though, too, it's important. It's like there had been black people or people of African descent who had been in, um, North America prior to this arrival of the slave ships. For example, there were, um, people of African descent who were on Spanish and Portuguese slave ships who explored parts of the now current American Southwest. Yeah, that's right. And so in the 16th century, right, we still, we had, it's not like the very first African arrives in 16, 19. It's that the first group of Africans who are enslaved arrive at that time in what is now the United States, but you're right. There had been, um, slave trading had been happening, you know, way prior to, um, the United States, his involvement in the slave trade. And then before that, the British colonies involvement in the slave trade, um, what I get a little concerned about though, when people will say things like that, I think we'll circle back to this several times, but I'll have students a lot of times say things like, well, you know, the United States, wasn't the only one who did slavery. True, true. Right. There seems to be like this automatic, like defensiveness that like a lot of white people will throw up. When, you know, only 400,000 slaves came to the United States, 10 million went, other places like there's like they will come across these figures and then just like, throw it out. You like the United States wasn't that bad because other people were doing it and it's yes. Other people were doing it. Other countries did participants. This was a global trade, but we're not going to use the numbers to be dismissive of the severity of it.
Speaker 0 00:13:49 Well, it's, it's more than just numbers. And one of the books I'm going to mention today talks about it. It's it's about numbers, but it's also more than about numbers, but indentured servitude. I mean, here's the thing it's, so we've got this in desert servitude and life in these colonies across the Americas are, is incredibly hard. Um, Jamestown, they have real trouble attracting laborers because it's hard work. And the mortality rates like super high. So in 16, 19, uh, this Portuguese slave ship is captured. And these 19 or 20. And I keep saying that because there's a little ambiguity, whether it was 19 or 20 people, um, are brought, are, are kind of captured. And then they're brought into Jamestown and it's assumed they're kind of put to work under indentured servitude contracts because we know in 1640, we've got, um, an African. So somebody who was actually born Africa, an African who actually gets sentenced to life in servitude because he tried to escape his indentured servitude contract.
Speaker 0 00:15:01 So these contracts traditionally had been used to help kind of poor people in England, pay their passage over the Atlantic. They would promise to serve a number of years. But a lot of these contracts were very complicated and included provisions that if you try to escape your contract, it would extend the length of it. If you broke the law or you did something that the contract owner did not like it would extend the contract. If you're a woman and you became pregnant, you would extend the contract. I mean, all these laws and this man, John,
Speaker 1 00:15:35 And when you got married, your contract, right? So that was what we talked about in a few episodes. It goes like there was a, there was a incentive to get married very young. If you were an indentured servant. Right.
Speaker 0 00:15:50 Well, here's the thing. I mean this, so this man who escapes, who tries to escape in 1640 John punch, he escapes with two other white men who were also under dentured servitude contracts. Uh, he's sentenced to life in servitude because of it. The two people he tried to escape with were only given an additional year on their contracts, S as well as three years, that they would have to serve a colony. This is a pretty important moment. This PO this point in 1640, because it is making a racial distinction between a black man and two white men.
Speaker 1 00:16:32 Well, at this point in time, it's also important to mention that there is a clear distinction between indentured servitude and slavery and people are well aware of that distinction. Um,
Speaker 0 00:16:43 Slavery existed in people. They knew about something called slavery. And I think the English were very proud that they didn't do that, that they had this indentured servitude there,
Speaker 1 00:16:53 Right. It was like, so what's interesting is that they do know that it exists. And in the 17th century, there would be people, um, you know, saying complaining about indentured servitude and saying, we're being treated like slaves. They know what slavery is. They don't think it's wrong. They just don't want to be a part of it. They don't, they know that it exists. They know that some people are enslaved and they think that they're above that. And that starts to become racialized white people who are in indentured servitude start complaining about their status. And you start to see a huge decline in the number of indentured servants who were coming to the colonies in the late 17th century. And certainly by the early 18th century, because they know now, wow, life over there is really hard. You know, you, they kind of figure out that it's not so great over there. And you have people complaining about their status. And to me, that just is indicative of the fact that they know that slavery is a thing and they don't want to be treated as such, or they feel somehow superior in their station in life that they should not be treated as slaves, and nobody should be treated as slaves. Right. But in this moment, there's this distinction that arises and it becomes racialized by what the mid 16th century, you kind of say 1640
Speaker 0 00:18:15 16, 40 seems to be a date. But I, you know, so you've got that. You've got, you know, kind of that moment of John punch, but I want to talk about a man. I brought up last week or the week before I forget which Anthony Johnson, because he's a fascinating guy. Um, evidently some people who oppose the black lives matter movement are now using him as fodder to make a really problematic argument. They're basically arguing that Anthony Johnson found slavery in America.
Speaker 1 00:18:51 Can you elaborate? I'm not, I'm unfamiliar with us one person. Let's just say, there's no slavery
Speaker 0 00:18:59 Searching this week. I found out about this and I had done a lot of reading about Anthony Johnson. Um, there's a great book. This is the first of several books I'm going to mention that there's a great book that was published, uh, sometime ago, um, called mine own ground. Uh, this is by, uh, um, th Brene and Stephen NS and, uh, it kind of traces Johnson's history. And what's interesting is with Johnson, is this 16, 2016, 21. Uh, he is brought over from Angola, um, as an indentured, sir. I mean, it's a slave, but it's an indentured servant. And that there's an expiration date to his servitude. There's a, there is a point after which he will no longer be a slave. Um, and he's brought over and to the Tidewater to Virginia because they're just really struggling to get employed, kind of people get people to work.
Speaker 0 00:20:00 And, uh, he works, uh, growing tobacco, basically everybody who's brought over there to work is kind of fueling this tobacco industry and he gets over there and he does fairly well and, and is able to save some money and eventually gains his freedom. And here's where people are opposed to black lives matter, start to change this narrative. So Johnson ends up with his own engendered servants and at least one of these indentured servants as a black man and that person attempts to escape. Um, and his name was John Case, or, uh, and he tried to escape and, and this is 1654. So after that 16, 40 kind of distinction of punishment for white men versus black men, uh, he tries to escape and actually, um, he's kind of determined to not be legally allowed to do that.
Speaker 0 00:21:16 Um, and what the right, some people on the right who are kind of trying to portray him as the founder of slavery arguing is that he brings this case against case, or, and we have the legal enshrining of slavery. Does Anthony Johnson have a slave at that point? Yes. There's Anthony Johnson found slavery in America. No, because other people are doing it at the same time. Anthony Johnson just happens to be one of the first cases we have in kind of legal records. Um, but it's kind of a gotcha, right? I mean, that's why they're pointing it out.
Speaker 1 00:22:02 I mean, the idea that anybody invents slavery is just so silly to me, because again, I hear students make this argument all the time in order to minimize, you know, the United States is history and slaving people, um, to say, well, slavery has always existed. Well, yeah, we do know that and that's not to minimize it. It's to say, yes, it's been a horror of human nature from as far back as we can tell. Right. And so to even try to make a claim that there was one person who invented this horrific concept and kind of just lists like thing that humans have done for a very long time to say that one person did it is absurd. And it's, you know, it's, it's easy. It's too easy to just say, well, this one person is responsible for all society's evils. It's just kinda silly. And why are concerned? You said this is like a political thing that conservatives want to point to one person. Why would that be the case? Can you elaborate?
Speaker 0 00:23:04 Well, I think it's a gotcha for them. They see it as a gotcha for the black lives matter movement. They're like, Oh yeah. Well, black people were the ones who originally enslaved black, other black people in the United States.
Speaker 1 00:23:14 Oh my God. I hate that argument too. I I've also had students, I keep saying this, I have students who do this or that it's not to say something bad about them, but I have students who will come to me to defend the United States. And they'll say things like, Oh, it was African people who sold other Africans almost to dismiss or say that it was okay. That slavery was okay because, well, they were sold by other black people. So how is it racist? And that kind of kind of argument is just so troubling and belittling too. I think the overall suffering of people. Um, and I also think it's wrong because to me, there's no excuse to say, well, the Spanish did it. Well, the Portuguese did it. Well. They sold them. It's like, all of these humans were involved in this really crappy, awful torture is our Barrack practice.
Speaker 1 00:24:07 And they were all benefiting from it financially, economically. Right. And then eventually it becomes a cemented racialized practice. Whereas it may not have been initially it becomes pretty firmly cemented racialized by the mid 17th century. And so this is what the 1619 project is arguing, I think is that, you know, this kind of underpins or kind of is this so important to look back at this moment in the 17th century to say, this is a really intricate portion of American history, even though the United States has not gained its independence yet, we can't ignore this important moment in the mid 17th century where slavery and enslavement does become racialized and it becomes black versus white
Speaker 0 00:24:59 Well edit points. I mean, this is again going back to this book by an on ground. Um, I think what's really interesting is this period of the 1640s to the 1650s is really this moment of flux because the Jamestown colony is now turning prosperous. I mean, Johnson is re benefits from that prosperity ends up accumulating about 250 acres of land, um, and enough resources that he needs his own servants, uh, indentured servants, and eventually something that becomes, uh, you know, uh, someone who becomes a slave. Um, and there's this great quote that they include. I'm going to read it really quickly because I think it summarizes like crystallizes Johnson, what it was like for somebody like Johnson at this moment. So Johnson display different social personalities within different contexts. Sometimes class consideration defined human relations. Sometimes race was the major factor while we today label identity was in fact, a fluid set of possibilities for as Johnson and the other free blacks understood legal exchanges were with members of the white planter, elite demanded forms of social and culture.
Speaker 0 00:26:11 Social and culture are quite different in character from those assumed in conversations with poor white neighbors or with other free Africans. It is not that Johnson did not possess a core identity. The problem is that from the fragmentary records, with which historian his best work, it is impossible to say we're certain that whether we, he was being more authentic and OneSphere as an act of his activities than the other more true to an imagined self, when he sued a white planter and the County court purchased an African slave or sold a horse to another free black, like other people living in a society Johnson learned to interpret situations to negotiate opportunities and calculate contingencies. And I think that I love that because it's like at the end of the day, Johnson is an individual. And sometimes he acted in ways that seem inconsistent to our modern sensibilities.
Speaker 1 00:27:04 He acted out of his own self-interest and to somehow suggest that people only act out of self-interest if they belong to a certain race is preposterous.
Speaker 0 00:27:16 So we've got that situation. And then we move to what I would argue is kind of the next formative kind of moment, which is Bacon's rebellion. Which you, what do you think about that? Is that okay?
Speaker 1 00:27:29 Yeah, I have that up right here. We've talked a little bit, but this is Edmund Morgan's argument in American slavery, American freedom, which is like this, you know, kind of cornerstone text, I think in American history and especially in graduate school, I think everybody's supposed to read it. Um, there's been a lot of pushback to it within the last several decades, but I would say, you know, this is, this text was written 1975 published in 1975. And Morgan makes this kind of at the moment, revolutionary argument about how slavery in the colonies is racialized based upon Bacon's rebellion. I think we've touched on this in other episodes, is that true?
Speaker 0 00:28:13 We talked a little about Bacon's rebellion and our rebellion episode, but I don't think we dealt very deeply into it. And I think it's a fascinating moment because it's just this, it is a collision between white English, colonist, black people, some formerly enslaved, some not, uh, and local indigenous people. And there's this kind of,
Speaker 1 00:28:37 They all joined forces, right?
Speaker 0 00:28:40 Well, this is so here's the thing. It's the English civil Wars have been going on and you have to connect this with England, I think, and the political situation in England, but there is a strong class-based disconcert discontent in the Virginia colony.
Speaker 1 00:28:59 Yes. And people of these lower classes. So like that included everybody of all colors, races, ethnicities, region religions, right. There were people who were of a lower class that kind of span the gambit of the color spectrum in the colonies. We have indigenous people, we have, um, you know, black people who were free, orange slaved or indentured, um, and white people who are of a lower class. Uh, and they all kind of pulled together and say, Hey, we're all kind of put into this class.
Speaker 0 00:29:32 Let's
Speaker 1 00:29:33 Let's rebel. Like we can, we can, as a mass take down this larger power and it's at this that they, that the British right. And like the powers that be are like, Oh shoot, we can't have all these low class people, um, being friendly and fighting against us. We've got to divide them. And what best way to divide them than to point out their differences with one another and to create a caste system basically amongst these individuals.
Speaker 0 00:30:03 Well, so the governor of Virginia, what he does, what I find so interesting is this is this on one level, it's about land. Um, and the Virginia governor kind of declares war against who he considers bad Indians. Um, and he starts kind of raising forces to go after and kind of kick people off, kick these bad Indians off their land and take their land. At the same time, you've got kind of, lower-class people kind of people who are struggling, uh, like bacon, um, who feel they are not being provided opportunities to expand financially in the colony. And that the elites keep benefiting from these rulings, including this Berkeley, Berkeley's the governor, including Berkeley's kind of announcement that they're going to go after these bad Indians, um, uh, Nathaniel bacon, actually petitions Berkeley, and says, you know, make me a general or make, give, put me in charge of a militia group and I can go do this.
Speaker 0 00:31:04 And he's, and he's told no. And to him, that is evidence that this is that the elites are maintaining their stranglehold on property in the colony. So bacon sets, declares himself general of a local volunteer group of Indian fighters. And they start finding these Indians and Berkeley doesn't like it, um, eventually the confrontation between bacon and, uh, the pot monkeys, which is, uh, a tribe that's kind of on the land that bacon targets first, um, Berkeley has some forces that show up there and there's kind of this confrontation between the two. Um, and what's interesting is Berkeley is really trying to use kind of new political sensibility because he, he pardons everybody in Bacon's army if they go home immediately, but he also declares bacon, a rebellion, a rebel, and he's an open rebellion. Um, and this goes on, I mean, I'm not going to get too much further into the details of this, but it is a political thing and it quickly incorporates classes well, and, uh, and kind of the end goal or the inter result of it is to kind of heal the class wounds and the colony and the Virginia colony that are so laid open during this rebellion between elites and poor white people, particularly, um, racial lines are, are solidified and, uh,
Speaker 0 00:32:47 Former slaves who were now free black people, um, that increasingly becomes an, a possibility to even imagine slavery is tied with. Yeah, well, slavery is tied with being black indentured servitude is, is disappears, basically. Uh, and there's this kind of racial unity, or a myth of racial unity that's created for white English people in the college. Um,
Speaker 1 00:33:19 Well, I think it's important to highlight though, just how formidable Bacon's forces were in disrupting life, right? I mean, you said, and like you said, we don't want to get too far into Bacon's rebellion. I mean, we could do a whole episode, I guess, but the point is like they have about 500 men, um, and they've just outnumbering Berkeley and Berkeley's troops, and they end up burning down the Capitol, the colonial Capitol, right? That's middle force of people who have come together, who are all from this low, lower class. And they just, they freak the elite people out and like, Oh my gosh, we've got to divide these peons immediately. And we see that to this day, we're like poor white people and poor black people would be best off uniting forces because of their similar needs that they each have.
Speaker 1 00:34:21 But racism for centuries has divided people like poor people, all poor people together should like band together, right? Or anybody making a thousand dollars a year should band together. And like we could topple the system, but because of all these different, these different walls that have been kind of thrown up as well, you're different than this person and that person. And it all, you know, all these differences get highlighted and everybody's too busy squabbling on the ground over things. Then, then, you know, people are making millions of dollars up ahead and like laughing at all of us. Well,
Speaker 0 00:35:01 I mean, what I see is this is that there's a possibility, there's a moment here where bacon, as he gathered his forces, um, and those forces become increasingly diverse. And he seems to be clamoring for a wholesale change in the way the colony is organized to heal that after Bacon's dad and bang it's bacon does not die in the Bacon's rebellion base bacon actually dies of some of body lice. Um,
Speaker 1 00:35:31 That sentence is really funny. Bacon dies of body lice.
Speaker 0 00:35:35 Yeah. Um, his death inspired this little ditty bacon, his dad, I'm sorry at my heart, that licensed flux should take the hang man's part. So bacon becomes vilified PA in popular culture in Virginia, after this relatively quickly. And officials in the colony moved to grant certain privileges to all white people living in the colonies to say here, you know, you're white, therefore you get these rights.
Speaker 1 00:36:06 Yeah. And then it immediately divides people and it makes even the lowest class porous, white people feel like they're part of something, right? Like they're a little bit higher on the rung of the ladder. Does this new book that came out recently, um, about cast in the United States? Yeah.
Speaker 0 00:36:30 Uh, what's it called, uh,
Speaker 1 00:36:34 Called cast the origins of our discontents
Speaker 0 00:36:38 Discontent. That was the word.
Speaker 1 00:36:40 And I bought it. And it's really an interesting book because she kind of compares the United States with like a caste system in India,
Speaker 0 00:36:53 Maybe a little bit. Right. But I mean, I would say historians who study the history of India would argue that the British simplify that caste system and misunderstand it. So part of me wants to speak misusing it, but
Speaker 1 00:37:10 So there's splash though in 2020, right. It was like Oprah's book club and inspire Elizabeth Wilkerson, but it was a lot of people have been talking about it to try to reframe the way we think about the United States. And I think in this context of Bacon's rebellion, it is interesting to think of the United States as a caste system and not a caste system like India. Although we use the word cast to describe what happens in India. But if we think about it in that way, like, it kind of is a different approach. I think, to studying this period of time, even though like, I mean, you pointed out there's some issues with that, but
Speaker 0 00:37:44 I think like the wide
Speaker 1 00:37:46 Availability and popularity of this book is going to have a lot of people thinking a little bit differently about this country's history.
Speaker 0 00:37:54 Well, so going back to Anthony Johnson really quickly, I think what's interesting with him is he dies in 1670 and his surviving, his widow, um, almost immediately larger landholders around Johnson swoop in, and they actually declared that Johnson was never legally allowed to own that land because he was a black man. So you see this quickly, right? Yeah. That's, I mean, this is six years before Bacon's rebellion, but there's a change that's happening. That's in the air and Virginia is the epicenter for this in the English colonies. This is the place. All of this is kind of being decided. Um, if you go further South, so we traditionally think of South Carolina as like of the 13 colonies, the place where slavery is kind of the most solidified kind of, but it's because South Carolinians, many of them have ties to Barbados and they bring a Caribbean model of slavery with them, which is different than the one that's kind of emerging in the Tidewater.
Speaker 1 00:39:04 I mean, it has to do with the different types of labor available, right? The types of labor that need to be done based on region. And a lot of the labor that's done in the Tidewater is vastly different than what ends up happening down in like Mississippi into the 19th century. It's just different. Right. And it's different than what's happening in the Caribbean plantations. Like with sugar, the need for labor varies wildly.
Speaker 0 00:39:33 Yeah. So we've got, so, you know, 16, 40, we've got, uh, some decisions 16, 70 Johnson dies. There's a decision that he could never have held land 16, 76 Bacon's rebellion. And then finally, Virginia implements slave codes like former formerly slave codes in 1705. So what I find interesting there is it's a 60, it's a roughly 60 year period where we go from a very kind of informal slave system where you've got indentured contract and intrude service contracts and a person doesn't exactly own another person, but a person owns a contract over that other person to now by 1705. No, the person actually owns that person.
Speaker 1 00:40:21 And to me, what's so important about that language and to lay out why the 16, 19 project and discussion of the colonies and, you know, the North American colonies prior to the establishment of the United States is how central property becomes to American and independence. Property is central. And property means owning slaves. You know, they avoid talking about slavery, like the plague in a lot of the founding documents, but they do not avoid talking about property. And it is at the forefront is Russian and property means owning other people. We can't, we can't move away from that. We have to talk about that.
Speaker 0 00:41:17 Well, so you great segue to the next book I wanted to mention, which, you know, I love this book and I like tell everybody I know to read this book. So Stephanie Smallwood publishes this book in 2007, called saltwater slavery, a middle passage to Africa from Africa to American diaspora. It is a brilliant book. I love this book. Um, it is so well-researched so thorough and it's supporting points of evidence, uh, to make this broader argument. And basically what Stephanie Smallwood says is over the course of the 17th and early 18th century, we get the creation of an Atlantic world economic system
Speaker 1 00:42:07 And the commodification of human beings, right. That's running. So
Speaker 0 00:42:11 We have, we have the commodification of human beings just as we are exchanging alcohol, tobacco, gunpowder, cloth, sugar, coffee, chocolate, all of these things that are being treated, traded justice, we're trading all of these things. We have commodified human beings the same way, and she uses these amazing accounting documents. And she focuses on the marginalia the notes that are written on the sides of the ledger. So a lot of these are like ships manifest and ledgers. And her focus is on the middle passage itself. The moment a person in Africa sets foot on the ship, that's going to take them across the Atlantic and she calls it a social death. And I love this idea. She comes up with because it's such a heartbreaking recognition of how these people are denied their humanity
Speaker 1 00:43:11 Immediately because they're commodified as if they're just a good or service being transferred. It you're right. Such a great way to put it.
Speaker 0 00:43:21 And it's a social death because these slave traders are very shrewd in how they do this. And what they do is they try not to have a ship loaded with Africans all from the same place, because if they can put people in a situation where they have no common way to speak to each other, no common cultural references, anything there less likely to be issued,
Speaker 1 00:43:46 Which religion, all of the things that make us human, if you strip people of that and isolate them. Right?
Speaker 0 00:43:55 Yeah. Yeah. And, and this is, I would argue and, and Smallwood does to some point, but she's got kind of a broader argument she's making, but I think she's pointing to, this is the nascence of black culture in America. This is the formative moment for it because so many of these people are deprived connections to their culture back in Africa, and they have fragmentary knowledge of this culture. And a lot of these people are very young.
Speaker 1 00:44:28 And so then black culture in America becomes the commonality becomes enslavement that they're in common is that they have been enslaved
Speaker 0 00:44:38 And it's an amalgamated culture, right? It's, it's, it's taking bits and pieces from West Africa, bits and pieces from Angola bits and pieces from equatorial Africa and kind of mixing them together and you get this new thing. Um, I wanna read a quote, um, and this has to do with the saltwater and I, this book just has so many more moments of poignancy. Um, what, what liquid to humans produce out of their eyes that is salt, water, basically tears. Um, and I think she's really kind of linking that, right? That the saltwater is this kind of ocean of tears, of these people that have been socially killed socially murdered. Uh, considering the saltwater dimension of slaves lives allow us to piece together a picture of a place, a time and an experience that does not otherwise figure in the archival record, such an analysis of what happened to captive Africans in the Atlantic and the Atlantic offers something we cannot get simply by including Africa and our histories of African America, or by singling out African captains as involuntary migrants or by name of the Atlantic crossing the middle passage. Here's the story of American slavery that begins in Africa and the Atlantic and the saltwater slavery of people's emotion, diaspora shaped by violence and compensating, the African Atlantic and American arenas of captivity, commodification and enslavement.
Speaker 0 00:46:12 Uh, love it.
Speaker 1 00:46:17 Yeah. That argument is so important for describing just how dehumanizing slavery was in the middle passage. Just like in the intentionality of it too.
Speaker 0 00:46:34 Oh yeah. This is not. Yeah. I mean, that's her whole thing is this is, this is strictly a numbers game for the people who are transporting these people across the Atlantic.
Speaker 1 00:46:43 And that's what she does with these ledgers, because so many people, so many historians for so many years, we're not able to really extract a story other than like a quantitative story about, you know, this number came this time, this number came that time. She in the margins is able to extract a human story. And the story is how people are stripped of their humanity in these ledgers. And it's really groundbreaking, historic, uh, you know, historical inquiry. Um, I think it really changes and shifts the way that historians can approach the archive because oftentimes so much of our data is this quantitative stuff. And, you know, I do that cause I, I S I think that because I work with prison letters a lot, right, where it's just like, people are just being written down one by one and counted, and prisoners are counted, but small ones work really brings to the fore that historians can do a lot of work, uh, by, what's not there just as much as what is there, right?
Speaker 1 00:47:43 And so she brings forth this really important story about the dehumanizing nature of the slave trade and how intentional it was. And, and you're right. It's such an important book, I think, for understanding the middle passage and so important for understanding the colonial the colonial era of the slave trade. Because something people don't realize is that the importation of slaves is banned in the United States 20 years after its founding people. You're not allowed to import slaves anymore on these huge slave ships. So throughout the 19th century, the United States slave population increases naturally meaning that there are extensive programs in order to make sure that slaves are being bred, essentially in order to repopulate the slave population. They're not coming off the boats from Africa anymore, but Smallwood makes us intentional argument about what slavery is in the middle passage in the 18th century and how it's different than what happens in the 19th. But it's the basis for the formation of African or black culture in the United States, this experience of being stripped of humanity. And that the one commonality is enslavement is the basis for black culture in America. It's profound.
Speaker 0 00:49:08 Well, and she, but she also points to, um, how this, these people who have been enslaved are being deprived at multiple points. And one of them is they are deprived connections with cultural connections with Africa, but at the same time, at this moment, at the end of the 17th and beginning of the 18th century, they are also being deprived, any ability to kind of establish families and communities of their own. And what she argues then is their only connection then becomes the next ship that's transformed, transporting, and slave people that it's. So it reinforces that idea that slavery is the common identity point for what will become black American culture.
Speaker 1 00:50:00 Well, and it's also important that argument is important and transferable to the times when, um, families are bought and sold, and that families are continually torn apart, right? Even after the experience on the slave ships, people will be transferred from plantation to plantation and owner to owner and kinship ties are constantly being interrupted. And this happens into the 19th century.
Speaker 0 00:50:31 So moving forward to the Virginia slave codes, I mentioned them briefly, and I don't want to spend a lot of time talking about them, but I do want to point out what the slave codes in Virginia do. One of the most important things they do is slaves are people who were imported from non-Christian nations. That's how it gets defined. And what that means is the English can't be slaves. The Irish can't be slaves, the French Germans, none of these people can be slaves, but many West African nations. Some of them were Muslim at this time. They could be slaves,
Speaker 1 00:51:12 But what's interesting is that in the 19th century, Americans take great pains to convert their slaves, to Christianity and use Christianity. Christianity is used both as a tool of anti-slavery and abolition rhetoric, as well as oppression, slavery, patriarchal rhetoric, right? Like it's used both ways, but they go to great pains to, to convert people to Christianity later on. So what is the, where's the shift there?
Speaker 0 00:51:47 I, you know, I, I'm not sure it's, here's the thing we've, we've got these bookend moments, right? We've got 1705. So things start to change about the 1720s. Um, but not to get too far off the track. The other thing I want to bring up is there is resistance to the Institute, this growing institution of slavery. And, um, I don't know, I'm thinking about your question. Uh, we have to come back.
Speaker 1 00:52:26 I think it has to do with the second grade awakening and we can talk about later. Yeah. We're going to talk about that 19th century, but it has to do with like religious revival, I think. And just,
Speaker 0 00:52:39 I'm just trying to think if there were, yeah, I was just trying to think if there were any antecedents to it, any kind of moment in the early 18th century where,
Speaker 1 00:52:50 Well, we weren't overly religious at that time. And we spent some time talking about that in a past episode, the United States and people who lived in the colonies and then certainly the founders weren't overtly religious people. There was kind of like this underlying yeah, we're Christian, whatever, but it didn't dominate their life. And it certainly didn't dominate their rhetoric. And that only comes about in the second grade awakening. So like 1790 to 1850 ish. And then you have this huge shift, but it's, it's kind of fascinating when you think about it in terms of how we went from like, well, people who are not Christian, those are who are the people who are enslaved to what we're going to convert our slaves to Christianity. Like it kind of doesn't make sense, but it is a development that happens. Right.
Speaker 0 00:53:37 Uh, do you know what was the only colony that very soon after its founding explicitly prohibited slavery? Is it New Jersey? Nope. No, Georgia, Georgia, Georgia. So I, well, it lasts from 17th. So Georgia's founded in 1733 and it's specifically established to be a Haven for kind of poor people and people that are being persecuted, um, to the South is Spanish. Spain and Spain actually offered a freedom for people from South Carolina, North Carolina, Virginia, who could escape into Florida, they would offer them freedom. Um, Georgia also to the West, there were various Indian tribes, um, who they had contentious relationships with best and the trustees when they kind of in 1735 banned slavery in the colony, they don't necessarily do it from an altruistic perspective. They do it because they don't want it to worry about slave rebellions because they've got these other security concerns. However, there are communities in Georgia, there's a Protestant Scottish group that publicly declare, um, their moral position to oppose slavery. And that actually lasts for 15 years. Georgia is there is no slavery in Georgia for 15 years, but in 1750 as the indentured servitude market in England, kind of dries up finally, uh, George authorizes slavery.
Speaker 0 00:55:25 So an economic driver simply, right, this is simply an economic decision to reimplement this thing.
Speaker 1 00:55:34 Yeah. And I think that that's what I was arguing last week is that slavery is all boils down to economics and about capitalism and profit and about driving production and economic gains. And I think that that's what the underlying controversy controversy is right now. Um, we're a lot of people don't want to connect capitalism and slavery, or they don't want to connect these moments as being, because it's not like it's all part of link, some big gigantic evil plan, but it is like everybody's looking out for their own economic best interest. And that's what ends up happening. They're like, well, slavery is lucrative. And the more, the moral aspect of it isn't considered when there's money involved. And that's the same way things are right now. I mean, morality is out the window when there are profits involved, the way that we workers, the way that we people are still enslaved overseas, building all of our crap that we use on a day-to-day basis and where et cetera, there's just no discussion about human life, the sanctity of human life, the, you know, the preservation or respect for it when it comes to profits.
Speaker 0 00:56:48 Well, and I think what's interesting and important to note at this point too, is by the beginning of the 18th century, slavery exists with the exception of Georgia until the mid 18th century slavery exists throughout the colonies. Uh, 42% of New York city households in 1703 had at least one in slave person, 42%.
Speaker 1 00:57:14 That's a lot, that's a lot only city,
Speaker 0 00:57:19 Only city in the colonies that had more higher percentage was Charleston, South Carolina. So this was a widespread institution. Now the per percentage of the population that's composed of enslaved peoples does get greater. The further South you go. So in the five Southern colonies, and remember, this is excluding Georgia up to a certain point about 31% of the population. Whereas you go to the far new England colonies and it's about 2.7% and it kind of gradients between those.
Speaker 1 00:57:53 So you have to kind of think about what that means though for the population it's like, you don't have to be super wealthy in order to have a slave at that time.
Speaker 0 00:58:02 In fact, I think there is an economic imperative in some groups to make sure, particularly after Bacon's rebellion, as many people as possible can own at least one slide
Speaker 1 00:58:16 To make them feel all a part of the gig. Right.
Speaker 0 00:58:19 They're part of it right now. Yeah. Um, so I think we can wrap it up here. Cause I think next time we're going to talk about kind of the new nation being founded and what they struggle with as we kind of move towards an inevitable. And it is, I, we, I know we don't like to say things are inevitable in history, but the discussions that go on with the U S constitution, it seems like there is an inevitable conflict that is coming about slavery in the country. I mean, is that too far to say,
Speaker 1 00:58:58 You mean in the 18th century that you see? Well, of course. I mean, and I think, you know, in the founding documents, like all the founders knew, they even said it like, this is going to be a problem down the road, but we'll leave it, no, leave it to leave it to kick the can down the road and they do. And they did. And it's like that can kicked home mind the suffering, the death, the torture, the just unimaginable pain that that caused is it blows my mind that they had within their power at that moment say, you know what, let's stop. Let's stop doing this right now. And they're like, eh, too hard. Let's let somebody else do it. Wow. Very disappointing.
Speaker 0 00:59:46 Yes. So next time I think we're going to talk about the revolutionary war and kind of the founding documents and slavery and kind of everything leading up to the civil war. Um, uh, spoiler alert, um, many former slaves joined the British during the revolutionary war.
Speaker 1 01:00:09 Yes. And so that's something that had that move into about, yeah. I mean, the British were like, Hey, if you kind of fight with us, we'll not enslave you anymore. And so that was really appealing obviously. And then the college like, Hey, wait a minute. And then, so that's one of the contentions with the 1619 project too, is the idea that, um, the, the author of the very first article, um, uh, for the 1619 project, um, Hannah Jones, she, Nicole Hannah Jones is her full name. Uh, she argues that the United States is fighting the revolution and trying to break away from great Britain because they want to retain slavery in a lot of historians flipped out about this. Like, no, that's not true. But when you see that proclamation, it's done more, right. Who has the proclamation done more? Yeah, more done. More says, if you come fight for us and you know, the British, then you can be free. That sets a whole thing of flame within the colonies. And so we can get into that later because we're going to talk post 1776, um, in our next step.
Speaker 0 01:01:22 Right. I think done more the problem with making, I think she oversteps the argument a little bit because Dunmore, this is 1775. He makes this argument, um, he had said he had announced his intent at the beginning of 1775, but it's not until November that he actually issues the proclamation. Um, by, so despite November of 1775, most of the people who are on board with leaving great Britain are already on board with it. Like they, they are there, aren't many more people you convince after that moment. So I think it's a thing of, I mean, I think if lard Dunmore had done this a couple of years earlier, then maybe you could start to make that argument. This is it's, it's a hard argument to make because we don't have enough colonists writing in journals. Like today, I decided to join the rebellion against great Britain because they've to take my slave away.
Speaker 1 01:02:20 Well, and I think a lot of the historians, like I think it was Gordon would Sean will lense. Um, these were some to the names. I think there was couple of others on the letter. Um, what they're arguing is that there was not anti-slavery sentiment in great Britain at this time, as a matter of fact, and that most of the anti-slavery push and sentiment came from the American colonies. And it was later in the 18th century. So to say that there was like this underlying, you know, like, Oh, well the British were against slavery and the Americans were for it. They're like, there's just no evidence to prove that. But what I would say is, and I think that this is the argument that, um, Hannah Jones should have put forth rather than saying they were fighting to keep slavery is like the idea, like I mentioned earlier about property, they were so, so, so concerned about control and retainment of property. And that means slaves. And so while it may not be, um, you know, they're writing in their journals today, I want to keep slavery. They they're really interested in retaining control of, um, and complete domain over their property, which includes humans. So yeah, I think there's something sad about that, but we're going over.
Speaker 0 01:03:31 Okay. Well, we're, we're done for today. We're gonna, we're gonna talk about the revolution and kind of the aftermath of that leading through kind of the, what we call the antebellum period audio's history next time. Um, but, uh, yeah, this has been great. I think it's, it's interesting to have these conversations and it kind of trace out some of these lines. Um, yeah,
Speaker 1 01:03:56 Who's going to win the super bowl today, Jeff.
Speaker 0 01:04:00 Um, so Tino's pizza rolls. Uh, I, I used to be a big football fan. I am not anymore. And it has a lot to do with actually some of the things we're talking about during black history.
Speaker 1 01:04:17 I very much agree with you. I used to follow football very closely until about, until I entered graduate school and was like, wow, this is,
Speaker 0 01:04:26 I read a couple of things and it really upset me and
Speaker 1 01:04:31 Not the football. So
Speaker 0 01:04:32 Yeah. Um, puppy bowl, I'll be watching puppy bowl actually. So, uh, anyway, well, uh, until next time on Jeff,
Speaker 1 01:04:42 Thanks for joining us.
Speaker 2 01:04:46 <inaudible>.
