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Slavery and Segregation

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Submitted By didotcidot21
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From Slavery to Civil Rights

Slavery

· ~ 16th century - slavery starts in the colonial America
· white citizens of Jamestown (arrived from Britain) decides to treat the first Africans in Virginia as indentured servants
· Slaves in the South worked on farms and plantations
· The treatment was harsh and inhumane
· Slave overseers were allowed to whip and brutalize noncompliant slaves
· Slaves were the property of their owners; African American women were raped by their owners
· Slaves were fed, clothed, housed and provided medical care in the most minimalist manner
· Dark-skinned slaves worked on the field; lighter-skinned slaves were servants
· The child of an enslaved mother will be a slave, too
· “one-drop rule” – just one drop of black blood à black person àslave

The Slave-Codes

· laws, which defined the status of slaves and the rights of masters
· most of the states had their own slave codes
· “a slave is a human being, who is by law deprived of his or her liberty for life, and is the property of another”
· many different definitions of “slaves”
· Virginia, 1705: All servants imported and brought into the Country...who were not Christians in their native Country...shall be accounted and be slaves. All Negro, mulatto and Indian slaves within this dominion...shall be held to be real estate
· Violence and other injustices against slaves
· Virginia, 1705: If any slave resists his master...correcting such a slave, and shall happen to be killed in such correction...the master shall be free of all punishment...as if such accident never happened.
· Reading by slaves illegal

Legitimacy of slavery

· Religious à God approves of slavery
· Philosophical à slavery is a natural order

Abolitionist movement
· 1787, slavery was prohibited in the territories north west of the Ohio Rover
· slave trade was forbidden
· it wasn’t illegal to

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