I recently visited the American History museum and came upon the most interesting artifact in the Lighting a Revolution section within the Transportation and Technology wing of the museum. This artifact is an advertisement from Charleston, South Carolina in 1769 about the selling of “a choice cargo” of two hundred and fifty slaves. The reason I found this particular artifact so interesting is the word choice, which was used to describe the “cargo” of these African American people aboard the ship. They were described as “choice cargo”, which is a strange way of describing human beings and is more of a way of describing livestock or furniture. Even though it is a known fact that African American slaves were dehumanized at the time period, it is still astonishing to me to …show more content…
When I was thinking about this, I immediately thought of an article from Saidiya Hartman titled, Venus in Two Act. This source highlights the importance of recognizing the individual lives of African American slaves, while not crossing the line of imagining a life for them. Hartman’s main argument was that when you begin to imagine a life for the slaves, you are remembering their narrative as only a slave and, therefore, not celebrating their life, but instead condemning them to an eternal life of slavery. African Americans were not only slaves and this was not their entire life, yet we cannot begin to understand or try to imagine what their life might have been. Hartman also talks about the archive, stating, and “I chose not to tell a story about Venus because to do so would have trespassed the boundaries of the archive.” Through this statement, Hartman also makes the point that one cannot imagine a life for a slave because their lives are not documented in the archives, and so there is no distinct line to draw of when one is crossing over into the make believe
This paper will discuss the Native American culture and briefly review their history, some beliefs and roles in society today. A short description into their culture with References will be used to show how Native Americans have been affected throughout hundreds of years. The trauma this culture endured has created many barriers, yet one often seen today is their extreme problem with the disease of Alcoholism. The Native American culture has gone through endless struggles, which has cost them to lose so much and still continues to impact them today. They are slowly moving back toward getting benefits that should have been available long ago, but in today’s world Native Americans still battle with many barriers not only in society, but in getting appropriate treatment for mental health or addiction issues.
Whitney Battle-Baptiste, the author of Black Feminist Archaeology creates the framework of this book because as a Black woman who is interested in race, gender, and cultural views, believes that too often in mainstream archaeological theory, Black culture and the experiences of Black women and our families are overlooked and dismissed. Dr. Baptiste states her explanation on how joining Black Feminist Theory and archaeology in her projects provides a way to open a discussion between archaeologists, which is her intent. It also shows that “when archaeologists critically engage with a dialogue about the intersectionality of race and gender, we begin to see the deeper forms of oppression and how they affect the lives of marginalized populations.”.
There are many contradictions pertaining to slavery, which lasted for approximately 245 years. In Woody Holton’s “Black Americans in the Revolutionary Era”, Holton points out the multiple instances where one would find discrepancies that lie in the interests of slaveowners, noble figures, and slaves that lived throughout the United States. Holton exemplifies this hostility in forms of documents that further specify and support his claim.
An estimated 8 to 15 million Africans reached the Americas between the 16th and 19th century. Only the youngest and healthiest slaves were taken for what was called the middle passage of the triangle trade, partly because they would be worth more in the Americas, and they were also the most likely to reach their destination alive. Conditions aboard the ship were very gruesome; slaves were chained to one anoth...
There are three things in the article that is very compelling to me as a reader, the living conditions of the slaves in the ships, the rape the women faced, and the punishment styles the rebellious slaves had to endure. What they endured was almost like hell on earth, it was almost genocide, but without the intention of genocide.
Part of the mythology every schoolchild in the United States learns…is that the colony of Virginia achieved quick prosperity upon the basis of slaves and tobacco. Thus, “the South” is assumed to have existed as an initial settlement, with little change until the cataclysm of the Civil War in 1861.
With African Americans being apart of the fashion industry, they faced many hardships. However, they created a distinctive voice in the history of fashion. Throughout the early twentieth century, Blacks designers influenced the fashion industry in America, having, “a system and structure for maintaining their particular type of fashion.” African American fashion was very popular and caught the attention from the media. Department stores held successful fashion shows, screened fashion movies, and staged fashion pageants. Fortunately, African Americans were allowed to attend these events, yet they were not welcomed. Fast-forward to today, the fashion industry has opened up several doors for African American designers, stylist, and models. However,
...hose moments of violence with this woman, being raped by men who have no say so with their own lives. The more your read you are forced to put yourself in this woman shoes, to imagine what she went through. As you read the article you are forced to ask questions, to reconstruct the past with Warren as she pieces together this slaves story. Even in the lyrics to the song he asks “Now stop and imagine that’s you. Now stop imagining unravels the truth and asks just who it is happening to”. (Veit, “The Travelers” Lecture) In both sources imagination is an imperative piece to reconstruct the past. There is no way that we can go back in time, resurrect the dead and ask them are the things true or false, we solely depend on our imagination to make this reconstruction, which is why our imagination is important to understand and construct life during the time of slavery.
Africanisms in America are a highly surveyed topic for the black community. Joseph E. Holloway describes Africanisms as “those elements of culture found in the New World that are traceable to an African origin” (Holloway 2). I believe, that africanisms are the traditions and cultural behaviors of African Americans that resemble the some of the same traditions and cultures in Africa. Which makes you ponder about what current elements does our culture use that ties back to Africa. Which in fact there are several africanisms that still exist. African Americans have retained an essence of Africa in their speech, hair care, clothing, preparation of foods, and music by over centuries of separation from the Dark Continent.
The Institute of Museum and Library Services is an independent government agency that tallies the number and type of museums in this country. By their count, there are 35,000 active museums, this represents a doubling of the number estimated in the 1990s (Ingraham 2014). Colorado has around 200 museums and five dedicated to African Americans (Visit Denver, 2016). The Black American West Museum started in the barbershop of the founder, Paul W. Stewart, out of his love childhood love for “Cowboys and Indians. Stewart moved to Denver as an adult and met his first real-life black cowboy, after being told there was no such thing as black cowboys. Exhibits at the museum include the history of miners, buffalo soldiers, pioneers, cowboys, early explorers,
This was one of the most common places where slave auctions took place. Through this cartoon, Miller helps prove Johnson’s point that slaves were seen as chattel property. The fact that there were auctions for slaves taking place proves that they weren’t seen as humans and were considered property who can be moved and bought or sold. Furthermore, you know the saying how you can’t put a dollar value on another human being? Many people think of their children as invaluable, as they believed you can’t put a price tag on them. They wouldn’t sell their children for anything in the world, even if they were offered millions of dollars. Well, according to Johnson, many slave masters tried using paternalism as a form of justification for slavery. However, if this were really true and they treated them like they were their children, how could they possibly be willing to sell their slaves in such auctions and tread them so brutally? Every slave owner was willing to part with their slaves for a certain price. As Johnson stated, this proves that the paternalism justification is just an outright lie. Additionally, a mother is seen holding her baby in the drawing, as others are bidding for her and her baby’s services. Once again, this proves how slaves were treated so cruelly, as Johnson pointed out, even putting a
Section 5: Artifact 1-2 are lesson plans that evidence my ability to create a cognitive interactive plan using the given curriculum for instruction in Science
Writing around the same time period as Phillips, though from the obverse vantage, was Richard Wright. Wright’s essay, “The Inheritors of Slavery,” was not presented at the American Historical Society’s annual meeting. His piece is not festooned with foot-notes or carefully sourced. It was written only about a decade after Phillips’s, and meant to be published as a complement to a series of Farm Credit Administration photographs of black Americans. Wright was not an academic writing for an audience of his peers; he was a novelist acceding to a request from a publisher. His essay is naturally of a more literary bent than Phillips’s, and, because he was a black man writing ...
Black history month is mainly a month that promotes racism among society. In nineteen seventy-six, America names February as black history month, as a commemoration of significant events and individuals of the African-American ancestry. Even though, black history month started as an innocent idea and if the American government would have rejected it, there would have been a colossal backlash across the black community. However, if one would take a step back and look at the big picture, one would notice that black history is American history, shows that not all ethnic groups is treated equally and brings a past time up that pours salt in old wounds. Under those circumstances, there should not be a black history month in the United States
conditions aboard ship were dreadful. The maximum number of slaves was jammed into the hull, chained to forestall revolts or suicides by drowning. Food, ventilation, light, and sanitatio...