Beruflich Dokumente
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The correct word choice points out the action of -Liz Kleinrock (Anti-bias educator)
enslaving someone was carried out by
oppressors and brings enslavement into the
present.
Relevance to the Present- “Why must we learn about slavery?”
● If not for slavery, people from Africa would not have been identified as a race
in the first place, let alone stigmatized, or regarded, as an inferior race.
● Race as a social concept, or society has dictated their roles to them, along
with the claim that the white race is superior to other groups, came about as a
rationale for slavery.
"The slave trade is the ruling principle of my people. It is the source and the glory
of their wealth…the mother lulls the child to sleep with notes of triumph over an
enemy reduced to slavery…"
Living Witness
Some of the descendants of African traders are alive today. Mohammed Ibrahim
Babatu is the great-great grandson of Baba-ato (also known as Babatu), the
famous Muslim slave trader, who was born in Niger and conducted his slave raids
in Northern Ghana in the 1880's. Mohammed Ibrahim Babatu, the deputy head
teacher of a Junior secondary school in Yendi, lives in Ghana.
"In our curriculum, we teach a little part of the history of our land. Because some
of the children ask questions about the past history of our grandfather Babatu.”
Babatu, and others, didn't see anything wrong with slavery. They didn't have any
knowledge of what the people were used for. They were only aware that some of
the slaves would serve others of the royal families within the sub-region.
West Africa in the 1500s
● A region of Africa
● What do you see when you look at this
map?
● Many cultures lived in West Africa
● Similarities
● Society was based on family
● Differences
● Most lived in freedom*
DILEMMA
Trading People
that were Enslaved
for Guns in West
Africa
THE CHOICES*
Starting in the late 1400s
European traders traveled to West Africa. They brought guns and other goods with
them. The leaders of kingdoms and villages in West Africa wanted these things.
They had to decide whether they were willing to exchange people for these goods.
Many leaders chose to take part in the slave trade. Africans’ that were newly
enslaved had to find a way to live through the harsh conditions on ships crossing
the Atlantic Ocean. Once Africans arrived in North America, they had to make
choices about how to survive in their lives as people that were enslaved.
DILEMMA
Surviving the
Middle Passage
The Middle
Passage
THE CHOICES*
The Journey of People that were Enslaved
The Slave Trade from Africa to the Americas
● In the 1400s, Portugal was the earliest participant in the transatlantic slave trade
● Western Hemispheric destinations of captive Africans included South America, the Caribbean and North
America
● European enslavers participated in and fundamentally changed the existing slave trade in Africa
● Europeans belief about dark skin color
● The Middle Passage
DILEMMA
Life as a Person
Who was Enslaved
in the Colonies
Life as a Person
Who was Enslaved
in the Colonies
THE CHOICES*
The Labor and Culture of Enslaved People during
the Colonial Era
● There is a significant difference between chattel slavery and indentured servitude
● In the 17th century, British colonists relied on enslaved Africans and Native Americans as well as
indentured servants for labor
● Enslaved workers performed heavy labor on tobacco plantations in the Chesapeake and rice plantations
in the southern colonies.
● Though there were some larger plantations in the North, the majority of enslaved laborers there worked
on small farms, as household labor and in other industries in urban areas
● Enslaved people across the colonies maintained aspects of their African cultures and resisted their
enslavement at every turn.
The
Triangular
Trade
The impact of slavery on the economies of French, British and Spanish North America.
Timeline: Number of Captives Embarked
and Disembarked per Year
Bacon’s Rebellion Connection
Bacon’s Rebellion (fought in Virginia in 1676) key event
transition from a mixed labor force to a total reliance on enslaved black people.
Remember, during Bacon’s Rebellion, enslaved and free black people united with
poor white people to oppose Native Americans and, later, the colony’s elite.
This event led to more clearly defined slave codes and a greater reliance on black
slavery over indentured servitude.