Africans in America: America's Journey Through Slavery (1998–…): Season 1, Episode 1 - The Terrible Transformation: 1450-1750 - full transcript
Presenting history's
best on pbs.
They came from different lands,
all facing an uncertain future:
English and ashanti
mande and Portuguese
German and ibo
fanti and spaniard
French and Angolan...
Some seeking adventure or
riches or religious freedom.
Others were captives, bartered
and sold like cattle.
Together they would
build a nation
and struggle over the
very meaning of freedom
and create the America we
ha ve inherited toda y.
Woman: I don't think you can
understand race relations today
without understanding slavery.
Even though people will say
"I didn't do it, my
father didn't do it
even my grandparents,
they didn't do it"
one of the things that's
essential is to know
that slavery is not just
a Southern institution.
It's an American institution.
Man: What evolves
in north America
is the belief system
where to be black
meant to be a slave and to be
a slave meant to be black.
Man: "We hold these truths
to be self-evident..."
Why is it self-evident?
It came from god.
They're inalienable, the
government secures them...
Remarkable document, didn't
apply to black folks.
And the man who wrote those
words, Thomas Jefferson
kept slaves.
He also wrote sometime
later to a friend:
"If there is a just god, we're
going to pay for this."
Woman: Slavery and freedom existed
side-by-side in this country.
Did it always have
to be that way?
And the early history of America
indicates that it
probably did not.
Woman: ♪ your country ♪
♪ how came it yours? ♪
♪ Before the pilgrims landed ♪
♪ we were here. ♪
♪ Your country ♪
♪ how came it yours? ♪
♪ Before the pilgrims landed ♪
♪ we were here. ♪
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who we are and who we will be.
They were torn from
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yet they never let go of their
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and our nation is
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Narrator: In the year 1645, in the
colony that was called Virginia
in the county of northampton,
after a season of disputes
a white man and a black
man went into the field
and there divided their
crop and their land.
According to the
testimony given in court
the man named Anthony, the negro
said, "Mr. Taylor and I
have divided our corn
and I am very glad of it, for
now I know mine own ground."
In America, it seemed,
all men would be equal
all men would be free.
In April 1607, three vessels
carrying 105 colonists
landed at a place
they named jamestown
at the edge of the
Virginia wilderness.
They hoped to establish
the first permanent
english settlement
in the new world.
There englishmen would
build a new promised land
the brave new world that their
poet Shakespeare dreamed...
A free land built by free men.
Man: The dreams were
utopian initially
of colonies without coercion,
without oppression
where each man would be
regarded as free and equal.
There was a lot of
idealism, I think
among the settlements
in the new world
a lot of ideas which I think
didn't stand much the test of...
Experience.
Narrator: Englishmen
believed that their god
had ordained them
to spread his word
and that they had
the god-given right
to drive out all unwilling to
live according to english law.
But in the first two years,
the colonists learned
that they were unprepared for
life in the American wilderness.
Man: "The fourth day of September
died Thomas Jacob sergeant.
"The fifth day, there
died Ben jamin beast.
"Our men were destroyed
with cruel diseases
"as swellings, flixes,
burning fevers, and by wars.
"And some departed suddenly
"but for the most part
they died of mere famine.
"There were never englishmen
left in a foreign country
in such misery as we were in
this new discovered Virginia."
George Percy.
Narrator: In 1609, 500 settlers
lived in the jamestown colony.
By the spring of 1610,
only 60 were left alive.
Man: "About the latter end of
August, a Dutch man-of-war
"arrived at point comfort.
"The commander's
name, captain jope.
"He brought not anything
but 20 and odd negroes
which the governor bought
in exchange for food."
John rolfe, Virginia colonist.
Narrator: In 1619, a year before
the pilgrims landed
at Plymouth rock
a mystery ship appeared
out of a violent storm
off the Virginia coast.
No one recorded the ship's name
but somewhere on the high seas
she had robbed a Spanish vessel
of a cargo of africans.
In search of supplies, she
traded the africans for food.
They had been baptized and
given Christian names.
As christians, they could
not be enslaved for life
under english law.
Like most Europeans
in the colony
they were purchased
to work as servants
for a limited number of years.
The new arrivals supplied
much-needed labor
for the tobacco crop that
was making men rich.
Settlers were planting tobacco
in the streets of jamestown
carving plantations out of
the surrounding wilderness
and shipping some 60,000
pounds a year back to england.
Man: Once tobacco is established
as a viable commodity
then the more land you control,
the bigger profits you can make
and in order to make those
profits, you'd need more labor
and you'd look for that labor
wherever you can find it.
Well, the colony builders
initially intended to rely
almost exclusively on
white indentured servants
as a labor force to
cultivate the crops
that were being
grown in Virginia
principally tobacco.
And in order to create these
raw materials or goods
you often needed labor.
Narrator: The world
the africans entered
was controlled by
wealthy englishmen
and populated by the english poor...
Most under the age of 25.
In return for
passage to Virginia
they had traded four to
seven years of their labor.
They were bound to a master
by an indenture form...
A contract that defined
length of service
and the conditions of servitude.
Most were promised "freedom
dues" after their service...
A bushel of corn, a new suit of
clothes and 100 acres of land.
Under Virginia's
headright system
a planter was entitled
to 50 acres of land for each
servant brought into the colony.
Wood: The issue always was how
long that indenture would be
and under what conditions you
would be forced to work.
At its best, it was a short,
friendly apprenticeship.
At its worst, it was a long
and exploitative situation
in which you might die before
you ever obtained your freedom.
Narrator: By 1622,
3,000 new settlers
drawn by the opportunities
of the tobacco boom
had arrived in Virginia.
Two years later, the first negro
child was born in the colony.
He was named William Tucker,
after a Virginia planter.
The prosperity
that began in 1619
and the dream of a new Eden...
Of people peacefully co-existing
under english law...
Was seriously threatened
in march 1622.
On good Friday, some 30 nations
of the powhatan confederacy
angered by english
violation of land treaties
attacked without warning
and attempted to drive the
english back into the sea.
Along the James river, the
Indians killed 350 colonists.
On the Bennett plantation
alone, 52 people died.
Among the 12 who survived
was a man named Antonio.
Man: Here's an individual
that arrives as one of the
first African Americans
in the history of what
became the United States.
He does what almost no one in
early Virginia managed to do
and that is live.
Everyone is dying of
disease, of violence
and in a sense, he's lucky.
Narrator: He had been brought
to the colony the year before
to work tobacco along
the James river.
His name appeared in the
1625 Virginia census
as "Antonio, a negro."
He was listed as a servant.
Man: He comes to Virginia.
He finds a society that
is just developing.
He's getting in on the
ground floor, as it were.
I don't know if he was able
to immediately envision
that there would be
opportunities for him here
that weren't
available elsewhere.
I don't know that anyone
could have foretold that.
Narrator: When Antonio arrived
the laws of Virginia did not
as yet define racial slavery.
They governed only the
status of servants.
At some point, Antonio changed
his name to Anthony Johnson
and married a negro
servant named Mary
from a neighboring plantation.
She bore him four children.
By 1640, it is clear Anthony and
Mary were no longer servants.
They had acquired their
own modest estate
on Virginia's eastern shore.
Breen: As Johnson prospered,
as he obtained land and cattle
he also acquired
dependent laborers.
What made all this
society go was property.
Your identity in the society was
determined rather obviously
by the amount of land, the
amount of labor that you owned.
Narrator: Anthony Johnson
was en joying privileges
belonging to a free englishman.
He claimed five
workers as headrights
and expanded his
property to 250 acres
along the pungoteague creek.
At least some of his
workers were white.
By 1650, Anthony was one of
400 black people in Virginia
out of a population of
almost 19,000 settlers.
In northampton county,
where Johnson lived
nearly 20 African men
and women were free
and 13 owned their own homes.
Woman: As Anthony Johnson
is accumulating property
it seems as though his
situation is secure.
You get a sense of this
individual, this black man
being treated like
any white planter
and his wife and
daughters being treated
like the wife of a planter.
At an early moment
when men and women were
sorting themselves out
when the rules, the
etiquette of race and labor
were not so clear
at this moment, in one
county in Virginia
it was not foreordained
that race relations
would become what
they did become.
Narrator: In 1640, the year
Anthony Johnson purchased
his first piece of land
three servants had run away
from a Virginia plantation
and headed for Maryland.
Captured and returned
to their owner
they were tried for
breaking their contract.
Man: "The said three
servants shall receive
"the punishment of whipping and
to have 30 stripes apiece.
"One called Victor, a dutchman
"the other a scotchman
called James Gregory
"shall first serve
out their times
"according to their indentures
"and one whole year apiece after
"and after that to
serve the colony
"for three whole years apiece.
"The third being a
negro named John punch
"shall serve his said
master or his assigns
for the time of his
natural life."
Jamestown court recorder.
Narrator: "The time
of his natural life."
According to all the legal
records that survive
no white servant in America
ever received such a sentence.
Davis: So what begins
to happen in the 1640s
is that those who are
controlling the Virginia colony
say to themselves
the fluidity that we've
seen in the past
the fluidity that has
allowed an Anthony Johnson
to serve less than the life term
to acquire his own
piece of ground
to develop a free status
is not something that
we want to project
as going further in the future.
We want to close down
that opportunity.
We want to begin to
show some distinctions.
Narrator: The english definition
of who could be enslaved
began to shift from
non-Christian to non-white.
For Anthony and other
africans in America
the idea of an equal
chance in the colonies
was now under attack.
In 1641, Massachusetts
became the first colony
on the British-American mainland
to recognize slavery as
a legal institution.
Connecticut followed in
1650, Maryland in 1663
New York and New Jersey in 1664.
Virginia legally
recognized slavery in 1661
and a year later, a
Virginia court decided
that all children
born in the colony
would be free or slave according
to the condition of the mother.
In Virginia, slavery
would be defined by race
and perpetuated
through heredity.
Perhaps in the middle
of the 17th century
if you were one of several
thousand africans
living in Virginia
you certainly knew that
your children would be free
you might have that expectation.
And to suddenly find
themselves involved
in lifelong servitude,
and then to realize
that, in fact, their children
might inherit the same status
that was a terrible blow.
That was a terrible
transformation.
Narrator: For the first
50 years of the colony
most of the unfree labor
force had been European
but that was about to change.
Word of the hard
life in Virginia
had gotten back to england
and the colonial government
faced a growing shortage
of servant labor.
Also troubling the colony were
the thousands of free men
most former indentured servants
who were unemployed and
roaming the countryside.
Man: The problem they face
is not only a decreasing
supply of indentured servants
but they face this
increasing problem
of what to do with all
these indentured servants
once they live out their term
and a lot of them
were surviving.
They had to be given land.
They had to be given
their freedom dues
and one of those dues
included even guns
and there was a lot of
unrest in Virginia.
Narrator: In 1661, servants
rebelled in York county.
Two years later
gloucester county authorities
foiled a plot by nine servants
to steal arms and ammunition
and march on the seat
of colonial government.
In 1676, the unrest in Virginia
exploded into civil war.
An army of 500... free men,
servants and slaves...
Rebelled against the colonial
establishment's restriction
on available lands.
They attacked peaceful
Indians, ransacked property
and burned jamestown, sending
the governor into hiding.
Blight: This disorder that the
indentured servant system
had created made racial slavery
to Southern slaveholders
much more attractive
because what were
black slaves now?
Well, they were a permanent,
dependent labor force
who could be... could be
defined as a people set apart.
They were racially set apart.
They were outsiders.
They were strangers, and in
many ways throughout the world
with a couple
possible exceptions
slavery has taken
root especially well
when the people who are enslaved
are defined as
strangers, as outsiders
and can therefore be put into
an inheritable, permanent
status of slavery.
Man: "I understand there
are some slave ships
"expected into York
river now every day.
"I desire you to buy
me five or six slaves
"whereof three or four to be
boys, a man and a woman...
"The boys from eight to 17 or 18
the rest as young as
you can procure them."
William fitzhugh,
Virginia planter, 1681.
Narrator: Few ships
coming from Africa
made the voyage
beyond the Caribbean
to sell their cargoes on the
mainland of British America.
In 1672, the king of
england chartered
the royal African company
encouraging it to expand
the British slave trade.
Shareholders included 15
english lords and 25 sheriffs
the governor of Virginia,
and John Locke...
"The philosopher of Liberty."
In its first 16 years,
the company transported
nearly 90,000 africans
to the americas.
Breen: In the last decade
of the 17th century
it was possible to imagine
that in a single year
the number of new
africans arriving
would equal the total black
population in the colony
or close to it.
These were men and women
that had no sense of the world
they were getting into.
And they seemed to whites as
very alien, foreign, unknowable.
Davis: The Europeans
look upon these people
and they project an image on
them, they project an identity
and that identity is African.
What that means is non-American.
What that means is non-European.
What that means is separation.
Man: "All servants imported
and brought into this country
"who are not Christian
in their native land
shall be counted and be slaves."
Man: "If any slave resists his
master correcting such slave
"and shall happen to
be killed in such
it shall not be
accounted felony."
"If any negro shall
absent himself
"from his master's service
and lie hid and lurking
"and if he shall resist
any person employed
"to apprehend the said negro
"then it shall be
lawful for such person
to kill the said negro."
Virginia general
assembly, June 1680.
Woman: We think about slavery
as this complete package
that just came to
evil landowners
and it didn't happen that way.
It happened one law at a
time, one person at a time.
As landowners felt the need to
control a different behavior
year after year,
they added more laws
until finally 1691
they passed the law
that made it illegal
to free a black slave
unless they were
leaving the colony.
So by then, it was
pretty much set
that this was going to
be a slave society.
Blight: To move from indentured
servitude to racial slavery
means that they're setting
their own history
on a course where freedom is
going to depend on slavery
where the political economy of a
major portion of these colonies
is going to depend on slavery
where the freedom of some
is going to depend on
the bondage of others.
It means that the
American colonies
this Jewel of the British empire
is living this
contradictory history now
of a society that is
increasingly rooted
in a labor system
that's human bondage
that's racial slavery.
Narrator: Anthony Johnson moved
his family out of Virginia
and north to Maryland.
There he leased 300 acres he
called "tonies vineyard."
On that farm, Anthony
Johnson died.
Back in Virginia
a jury decided that the land
Anthony had left behind
could be seized by the state
"because he was a negro and
by consequence, an alien."
Breen: One wonders how
Johnson would have viewed
this changing world of Virginia.
He lived a very long time.
He survived and did quite well
by the standards of the day
in building up properties
hundreds, hundreds of
acres, and cattle.
By the standards of the time
anyone would say
he did quite well.
There's no reason to believe,
as of, say, the 1670s
that the Johnson family is
going to be squeezed out.
Narrator: Within a few years,
Anthony's grandson John
purchased another 44 acres
and in memory of his
grandfather's homeland
called the farm "Angola."
Latimer: By the time the
end of the century came
Anthony Johnson's children
and grandchildren
may well have been
fighting to stay free.
Many free people were
sold into slavery.
No, they couldn't prove
that they were free.
They had no way of
letting anybody know
that they were free
so if a plantation
owner came by and said
"this is my slave and I want
to sell him," you were sold.
Narrator: By the
end of the century
nearly 58,000 people
lived in the colony.
16,000 were listed as negroes.
In 1705, the Virginia
assembly passed laws
clearly defining the distinction
between a slave and a servant
relegating all slaves to
the status of real estate.
The next year
John, the third generation
of Johnsons in America
died without an heir.
That would be the last mention
of the plantation named
for Anthony's birthplace.
Angola plantation, like
the Johnsons themselves
disappeared from the record
books of colonial America.
Man: "The African
trade is a trade
"of the most advantage to
this kingdom of any we derive
"and as it were all profit
"it is indeed the best
traffic the kingdom hath
"as it doth occasionally
give so vast an employment
to our people both
by sea and land."
John Cary, Bristol, england.
Narrator: In 1698, the english
parliament ended the monopoly
of the royal African company
on the African slave trade.
It became the right of every
free-born British subject
to trade in slaves.
Over the next half century
the number of
africans transported
to the British colonies
in British ships
increased from 5,000
to 45,000 a year.
England became the largest
trafficker in slaves
in the western world.
"It is the first principle and
foundation of all the rest"
said one British writer:
"The mainspring of the machine
which sets every
wheel in motion."
He was born ibo...
The son of a tribal elder,
the favorite of his mother.
He died an englishman...
The father of two daughters and
the husband of an englishwoman.
At the age of 11,
olaudah equiano
was kidnapped by africans
and sold to Europeans.
Man: "When the grown people were
gone far in the fields to labor
"the children generally
assembled together to play
"and some of us often used
to get up into a tree
"to look out for any
assailant or kidnapper
that might come upon us."
"One day
"when only I and my sister
were left to mind the house
"two men and a woman
got over our walls
"and in a moment seized us
both without giving us time
"to cry out or to
make any resistance.
They stopped our mouths
and ran off with us."
Olaudah equiano.
Who are we looking for?
Who are we looking for?
It's equiano we're looking for.
Has he gone to the stream?
Let him come back.
Has he gone to the market?
Let him come back.
Has he gone to the farm?
Let him return.
It's equiano we're looking for.
Narrator: For more
than four centuries
people disappeared from the
savannas, the rain forests
and the villages
of black Africa...
Farmers and craftspeople,
commoners and African nobility.
Most were strong young
men, age 15 to 25
but women and children
were also taken and sold.
To obtain slaves,
africans waged war
destroying communities,
stealing people.
To escape the spreading violence
many moved into the interior
abandoning family compounds,
farms, entire villages.
In west Africa
more than 20 million people
were kidnapped into slavery.
Only half would survive
the journey to the coast.
The boy equiano was
one of the survivors.
Equiano: "At last I came to
the banks of a large river.
"I was beyond measure
surprised at this
"as I had never before seen
any water larger than
a pond or rivulet."
"And to my surprise was
mingled with no small fear
"when I was put into
one of these canoes
and we began to paddle and
move along the river."
Narrator: On the
journey to the coast
equiano passed from one
African master to another.
Once he was sold for
172 cowrie shells.
He learned three
different languages
traveled some 800 miles
and encountered
people and customs
unfamiliar and
frightening to him.
After close to seven months
of travel on foot and by boat
he reached the African coast.
Equiano: "The first object
that saluted my eyes
"when I arrived on the coast
was the sea and a slave ship
"which was then riding at anchor
and waiting for its cargo.
"These filled me
with astonishment
but was soon converted
into terror."
Olaudah equiano.
Narrator: It was an
ancient business
this trade in human beings
between Africa and Europe.
50 years before Columbus
sailed to the new world
Portuguese explorers had
sailed to west Africa.
At first seeking gold,
they built a fort in 1482
and called it El Mina, the mine.
The Portuguese pointed their
guns toward the Atlantic
to guard, not against africans
but against European
competitors.
Over time, the
castle changed hands
from the Portuguese to the
Dutch and finally the British
and the trade changed from
gold to human beings.
Man: "Concerning the
trade on this coast
"we notified your
highness already
"that is has completely
changed into a slave coast
"and that nowadays the natives
no longer occupy themselves
"with the search for gold
"but rather make
war on each other
"in order to furnish slaves.
The gold coast has changed
into a complete slave coast."
William de la palma
director, Dutch
west India company.
Narrator: Along the
west coast of Africa
from Senegal in the north to
the cameroons in the south
the Europeans built some
60 forts and castles
warehouses for
European merchandise
and for African slaves.
Called "factories," they
were commercial centers
where agents or "factors"
traded rum, cloth and guns
for human beings and gold.
Man: "The most notable
item is the slave house
"which lies below ground.
"It consists of vaulted cellars
divided into several apartments
which can easily hold
a thousand slaves."
Captain John barbot,
French slave trader.
Narrator: In dungeons built
deep into the ocean rock
people waited, sometimes
a day, sometimes a year.
These chambers would be their
last memory of Africa.
When a slave ship arrived
and anchored off the coast
they would be led out from
the darkness to the beach.
Barbot: "As the slaves come down
to fida from the inland country
"they are put into a booth,
or prison, near the beach.
"When the Europeans
are to receive them
"they are brought out
into a large plain
"where the surgeons
examine every one of them
"all stark naked.
"Each which have passed as
good is marked on the breast
"with a red-hot iron
imprinting the Mark
"of the French, english
or Dutch companies.
"In this, particular
care is taken
that the women, as tenderest,
be not burnt too hard."
Captain John barbot,
French slave trader.
Achebe: The white people
did not need to be present
in the interior of Africa.
All they needed to do was
to supply the weapons.
The people they dealt with were
those coastal peoples
right on the coastline
who controlled the
territory down there.
So equiano would not have
met, maybe not even heard
of white people.
Man: "I have found no place where
I can enlarge my fortune so soon
"as where I now live.
"In this manner, we spend the
prime of youth among negroes
"scraping the world for money,
the universal god of mankind
until death overtakes us."
Nicholas Owen, slave trader.
Unsworth: Europeans died
like flies in that climate.
The average expectation
was three or four years,
you know, really.
And so they had to make
money while they could
because they knew they
didn't have much time
so in that sense, of
course, they were trapped.
They were caught in the web
of the system and held there
and died there.
Narrator: The Europeans made
more than 54,000 voyages
to trade in human beings.
No one will ever know
the exact number of people taken
from the shores of west Africa
but more than 11 million
have been counted
in the records that remain.
Most headed for south America
and the Caribbean islands
some half a million to the
mainland of north America.
Man: "December 29,
1724, no trade today
"though many traders
came on board.
"They informed us
"that the people are
gone to war within land
"and will bring prisoners
enough in two or three days
in hopes of which we stay."
"December 30, 1724, no trade yet
"but our traders came on
board today and informed us
"the people had burnt four
towns of their enemies
so that tomorrow
we expect slaves."
Liverpool surgeon.
Man: "Received on this cargo 46
men, 34 women, 14 boys, six girls
"and 147 chests of corn.
"The rest of the goods
delivered onshore
to cape coast and Accra to Mr.
harbin."
William Dexter, ship's captain.
Narrator: Ship captains
were cautioned
not to buy all their
slaves from one place.
Africans who knew each other,
who spoke the same language
were more likely to
conspire and rebel.
Unsworth: There would be maybe 25
seamen and the ship's officers.
There might have
been a crew of 30
and these 30 had to
control maybe 300 men...
Black men and women... who
were aware of being abducted
and who were desperate
and who were dangerous
because they were obviously
waiting to seize any opportunity
that was offered to rebel
and to take over the ship
and to kill the crew
and that did happen
fairly frequently.
The only way that this
could be contained
was by a system of fear.
Equiano: "I was now persuaded that I
had got into a world of bad spirits
"and that they were
going to kill me.
"Their complexions, too,
differing so much from ours
"their long hair and the
language they spoke
"which was very different
from any I had ever heard
"united to confirm
me in this belief:
"I no longer doubted my fate.
"I asked if we were going to
be eaten by those white men
with horrible looks, red
faces and long hair."
Olaudah equiano.
Narrator: Captains called the voyage
from west Africa to the new world
"the middle passage"...
The middle leg of a
triangular course
that began and ended in Europe.
From english ports,
ships sailed to Africa
to trade goods for slaves.
Then the human cargo was
taken to the americas
and traded for raw materials
which were then carried
back to england and sold.
The crossing from
Africa to the americas
usually took 60 to 90 days
but some voyages took as long
as four or even six months.
Bad weather and sickness could
turn any trip into a nightmare.
Man: The cramped quarters of
ships being packed in such a way
that a slave will be between
the legs of another slave
and having to lie in the feces.
The lack of air.
The longer this trip takes,
the more suffocating.
Man: "The surgeon, upon going
between decks in the morning
"to examine the
situation of the slaves
"frequently finds several dead
"and sometimes a dead
and living negro
"fastened by their
irons together.
"When this is the case, they
are brought upon the deck.
"The living negro is disengaged
and the dead one
thrown overboard."
Alexander falconbridge,
ship's surgeon.
Jones: There are no doubt
people who went mad...
Inability to communicate,
decisions having to be made
and this person is
suffering as yourself.
Does one help?
Does one simply try to make it
the best that one can alone?
Not knowing, where am I being
taken, what is my fate?
For weeks, months, depending
what the point of origin was.
Equiano: "One day, two
of my wearied countrymen
"who were chained together
"somehow made it
through the nettings
"and jumped into the sea.
"Immediately another
quite dejected fellow
"also followed their example
"and I believe many more would
have very soon done the same
"if they had not been
prevented by the ship's crew
who were instantly alarmed."
Olaudah equiano.
Unsworth: The idea, I think was
that the slave cannot
be allowed to die
by his own will and intention.
He cannot be allowed
to die voluntarily.
If he's going to die, it must
be at the hands of his captors
so that in that case he doesn't
spread a dangerous example.
Man: "Monday, 11 December.
"By the favor of
divine Providence
"made a timely discovery today
"that the slaves were forming
a plot for insurrection.
"Surprised two of them
"attempting to get
off their irons
"and in their rooms found
knives, stones, shot, etc.
"And a cold chisel.
"There appeared eight
principally concerned
"in protecting the mischief
"and four boys in supplying them
with the above instruments.
"Put the boys in irons and
slightly in the thumbscrews
to urge them to a
full confession."
Captain John Newton.
Man: "We stood in arms,
firing on the revolted slaves
"of whom we killed
some and wounded many.
"And many of the most mutinous
"leapt overboard and drowned
themselves in the ocean
with much resolution."
James barbot, english
sailor, 1701.
Equiano: "Often did I think many
of the inhabitants of the deep
"much happier than myself.
"Every circumstance I met with
"served only to render
my state more painful
"and heighten my apprehensions
and my opinion of the
cruelty of whites."
Olaudah equiano.
Unsworth: The slavers,
they knew at one level
that these were human beings
because they were obviously,
clearly, human beings.
At the same time, they
were objects of profit
and those two concepts couldn't
obviously be really reconciled
and they never were reconciled.
It was just I think
that the humane...
The sense of the humanity
of these people...
Was simply suppressed
for the sake of gold.
And the shocking thing
is that human beings
are able indefinitely
to suppress the urgings
of their common humanity
and to deny it for the
sake of making profits.
Equiano: "Is not the slave trade
entirely a war with the heart of man?
"And surely that which is begun
"by breaking down the
barriers of virtue
"involves in its continuance
destruction to every principle
and buries all
sentiment in ruin."
Olaudah equiano.
Narrator: The middle
passage ended for equiano
on the island of Barbados...
One of the most profitable
colonies in the British empire.
On Barbados, it was calculated
that it was cheaper to
work slaves to death
and replace them with new slaves
than to treat them humanely.
Within three years of arrival
one out of three
slaves would die.
The boy equiano, judged too
small to cut sugar cane
was shipped north to the
mainland of British America.
On the mainland, the
plantation system of Barbados
was admired and imitated
particularly on the
Carolina coast.
Man: South Carolina was started
as the colony of a colony.
Barbados had become
overpopulated
with the younger sons of english
merchants and with their slaves
and in both cases
they began to look around,
cast around for new places
and within the first decade
after south Carolina's
initial settlement
there were just loads of
immigrants from Barbados
who brought with them
slaves from Barbados
but more important than
just bringing slaves
unlike Virginia, they brought a
fully conceived idea of slavery.
Narrator: On the shores of the
Ashley river stands middleton place
home to one of Carolina's
oldest families.
Middleton family members
were destined to become part
of the Carolina elite...
A governor, a congressman
a signer of the declaration
of independence.
The family had been among
the first settlers
arriving from Barbados in 1678
with a land Grant in goose creek
just 14 miles north
of Charleston...
Carolina's slave-trading center.
By 1706, a second
generation of middletons
had almost tripled the size
of the family's landholdings
to 5,000 acres of
Carolina wilderness.
At age 25, young
Arthur middleton
was master of the
oaks plantation.
Man: "Dear Sarah... Mr.
Arthur middleton
"is married to my sister
"and was a schoolfellow with
me when I was at Carolina.
"He is a sensible man and one
of the richest in the country
with upwards of 100 negroes."
Thomas amory.
Wood: Racial slavery turns out
to be extraordinarily profitable
for the people who
have seized control.
The planter can
complain in his diary
that it's been a bad
year or the crop is weak
or the rainy season
lasted too long
but year in and year out
tremendous profits
are being made.
Narrator: The immigrants
from Barbados
had searched for a cash crop
that would make them rich.
Families like the middletons found it...
It was rice.
The most prized
africans in Carolina
were from Angola, sene-Gambia
and the windward coast...
People who brought the
rice-growing skills
the Europeans did not have.
Man: "Rice is the
most unhealthy work
"in which the slaves
were employed
"and they sank under
it in great numbers.
"The causes of this
dreadful mortality
"are the constant moisture
and heat of the atmosphere
"together with the alternate
floodings and drying
"of the fields on which the
negroes are perpetually at work
"often ankle-deep in mud
with their bare heads exposed
to the fierce rays of the sun."
Captain basil hall.
Man: "Many masters
can't be persuaded
"that negroes and Indians
are otherwise than beasts
"and use them like such.
"I daily perceive that
many things are done here
out of a worldly principle,
little for god's sake."
Francis lejau,
anglican minister.
Narrator: In 1706, the middletons
donated four acres of land
for a church in goose creek.
Francis lejau, the first
full-time anglican minister
was not opposed to slavery
but he preached that all men...
Regardless of color...
Had immortal souls.
He earned a reputation for
spending time with the negroes
baptizing and teaching
them to read the Bible.
He spoke out often against
the brutality of
Carolina slaveholders
who were seeking to control the
growing population of africans.
Lejau: "I have had of late
"an opportunity to
oppose with all my might
"a very unhumane law in
relation to runaway negroes.
"Such a negro must be mutilated
"by amputation of
testicles if it be a man
"and an ear, if a woman.
"I have openly declared
against such a punishment
grounded upon the law of god."
Francis lejau.
Washington: The
anglican missionaries
probably described
the black community
better than anyone at the
time in early Carolina.
They described it as a
nation within a nation.
The africans lived separated
from the rest of society.
Being freshly from Africa, their
frame of reference was African.
They were very much familiar
with this kind of
subtropical environment
that they found themselves
in in Carolina.
They're still communities
of people who live, love
raise children and work, and
they feel that as people
as humans, they have a
right to come and go.
They have a right to visit
their wives and their husbands
on other plantations.
It was, as one traveler
said, "a negro country."
Man: "Their numbers
increase every day
"as well by birth
as importation.
"And in case there should arise
a man of desperate courage
"exasperated by a
desperate fortune
"he might kindle a servile war.
"Such a man might be
dreadfully mischievous
"before any opposition could
be formed against him
and tinge our rivers as wide
as they are with blood."
William byrd, Virginia planter.
Narrator: In 1710, just 15 years
after rice took hold in Carolina
africans began to outnumber
Europeans in the colony.
As the number of africans Rose
so, too, did white
fear and retaliation.
Equiano: "Mr. D. Told me once
"he cut off a negro man's
leg for running away.
"I asked him if the man
had died in the operation
"and how he, as a Christian
"could answer for the
horrid act before god
"and he told me
"answering was a thing
of another world.
What he thought and
did were policy."
"He then said his scheme
had the desired effect:
It cured that man and some
others of running away."
Olaudah equiano.
Wood: If you're a
white authority
you're constantly
trying to figure
how tightly you want
to impose the lid
with respect to
people running away.
How fierce should the
punishments be, you know?
Should it be a whipping?
Should it be the loss of a
finger or a hand or a foot?
You know, should it be wearing
shackles perpetually?
The entire system of control is
based on physical punishment
often making examples
out of people
so that others will
be intimidated.
Narrator: The colonial
legislature passed laws
designed to more tightly control
the growing black majority.
Planter records reveal
punishments inflicted
for infractions large and small.
Byrd: "8 February, 1709.
"I Rose at 5:00 this morning
then read a chapter in Hebrew
"and 200 verses in
homer's odyssey.
"I ate milk for breakfast.
"I said my prayers.
"Jenny and Eugene were whipped.
"17 April... anaka was whipped
yesterday for stealing the rum
"and filling the
bottle up with water.
"I said my prayers and
I danced my dance.
"Eugene was whipped again
for pissing in bed
"and Jenny for concealing it.
"I took a walk about
the plantation.
"Eugene was whipped
for running away
"and had the bit put on him.
"I said my prayers.
"I had good health, good
thoughts and good humor.
Thanks be to god almighty."
William byrd, Virginia planter.
Washington: When you
enslave a person
in some ways you become
a slave yourself
because masters and slaves
are natural enemies
and that's what the
Europeans had to deal with.
They had to deal with a
population living amongst them
sometimes the majority of the
population, in hostility.
They lived amongst enemies.
And as one Carolina planter said
"nowhere on earth is
mankind so plagued
by enemies living within them
as we are in our own homes."
Man: "The Spanish are
receiving and harboring
"all our runaway negroes.
"They have found out a new way
"of sending our own
slaves against us
"to Rob and plunder us.
"We are not only
at a vast expense
"in guarding our
Southern frontiers
but the inhabitants are
continually alarmed."
Arthur middleton,
acting governor, 1728.
Narrator: On the south
Carolina frontier
word spread of
africans and Indians
coming up from Spanish
Florida to attack planters
and of Spanish authorities
offering runaways freedom
on Florida soil.
In goose creek, an anglican
minister complained
of "secret poisonings and
bloody insurrections
by certain Christian slaves."
Wood: South Carolina is a
pot ready to boil over.
Imagine coming into a setup
that seems almost unbearable
and finding that people have...
Many of them have
somehow rationalized it
or are enduring it, that's
the best they can do.
But you as a newcomer might feel
"I'm not going to
put up with this.
Better to die trying
to change this."
And there must have been
hundreds of people like that
in south Carolina in the 1730s.
Narrator: By the 1730s,
close to 2,000 africans
were arriving at the port
of Charleston each year.
From 1735 to 1739, out
of 11,000 slaves landed
more than 8,000 were
listed as Angolans.
Davis: What develops is
a sense among Europeans
that slaves from certain areas
have particular characteristics.
Slaves from the Angola area
are reputed among the english
to be particularly difficult
to be rebellious.
Narrator: In St. Paul's parish
there were close to a
thousand new people
who just a few years before
had been taken from the
Angola region of Africa.
Wood: One of them, we only know
his name, a man named jemmy
apparently had come
recently from Angola.
He may not even
have spoken english
but he may have had strong
contacts with other Angolans.
He had to try to build alliances
not only with other Angolans,
other new arrivals
but with other africans,
African Americans
people from a community that
he was not that familiar with
and apparently he succeeded.
Narrator: During the early morning
hours of September 9, 1739
almost as soon as word is
received in south Carolina
that england and
Spain are at war
some 20 Angolan slaves, led
by the man named jemmy
began marching toward St.
augustine
and the promise of freedom.
Just 30 miles from the
middleton's oaks plantation
at the stono bridge, they
seized a general store
where there were
arms and powder.
They killed the storekeepers
and left their heads
on the doorstep.
Wood: What better moment
to start an uprising
and try to strike out for St.
augustine
and find freedom in Florida
in the hope that the
Spanish authorities
are willing to Grant freedom
to english-speaking slaves
who escape from the
carolinas into Florida.
Narrator: On the march south
the africans did not kill
every white they encountered.
They spared Mr. Wallace
an innkeeper they knew to
be kind to his slaves.
But before the day ended, they
had killed more than 20 people.
As other slaves joined them
they became an army
of almost a hundred
camped at the edisto river
waiting for others to
gather under their flag.
Davis: The entire force
of english north America
was going to come down on them
because this was an issue
not merely for those
in south Carolina
immediately surrounding
this area.
This was an issue for
every European colonist
everywhere in the colonies
to quash this and to provide
some exemplary punishment.
Narrator: Around noon, the nearest
white settlers were alerted.
By 4:00 in the afternoon
they caught up with the negroes
along the edisto river
and fired upon them.
Eyewitnesses recorded that
the rebels fought boldly
but at least 14 were killed or
wounded in the first attack.
Others were surrounded,
questioned and then shot.
The armed colonists then
turned toward Charleston
and on mile posts along the way
they left the heads
of the executed men.
Wood: Just the way war
transforms people
this terrible transformation
into race slavery
had changed people by the
middle of the 18th century.
The violence you see at stono
is a violence that had become
pervasive in the culture.
By the middle of
the 18th century
this had become a way of life
in the english colonies.
Washington: Stono was sort of
the beginning of the concept
that the black population had
to be utterly controlled
and the legislation that came
out of stono, the negro act
took away whatever liberties
the africans had.
Narrator: Freedom of movement,
freedom of assembly
to earn money, to learn to
read, all were outlawed.
South Carolina imposed duties
on all slave importations
and encouraged
European immigration
in order to change the
ratio of whites to blacks.
The negro act became the
model for slave laws
throughout the mainland
of British America.
Equiano: "Why do you use those
instruments of torture?
"Are they not fit to be applied
"by one rational
being to another?
"And are you not struck with
shame and mortification
"to see the partakers of
your nature reduced so low?
"But above all
"are there no dangers attending
this mode of treatment?
Are you not hourly in dread
of an insurrection?"
Olaudah equiano.
Narrator: News of the rebellion
traveled quickly to New York
now the third largest
city in British America.
Most of Manhattan island
was unbroken wilderness
crossed by streams emptying into
both the Hudson and east rivers.
By 1740, except for
Charleston, south Carolina
no city in colonial America
had so high a density of slave
population as New York.
Crowded onto the Southern tip of
the island lived 11,000 people
of which more than
2,000 were black.
Foote: There was really an illusion
of intimacy between enslaved blacks
and their white slave owners
who lived under the same roof.
These people could not
trust one another.
In fact, the slave owners
considered the enslaved blacks
domestic enemies.
Man: "New York,
November 18, 1731.
"Be it ordained by the
authority of this city
"that all negro, mulatto
and Indian slaves
"that shall die within this
city be buried by daylight.
"And for the prevention of
great numbers of slaves
"assembling and meeting
together at their funerals
"under pretext whereof they
have great opportunities
"of plotting and confederating
together to do mischief
"be it further ordained
that not above 12 slaves
shall assemble or meet
together at the funeral."
Minutes of the common
council of New York.
There were probably a lot
of other issues going on
in New York City at that time
that made whites
suspicious of blacks.
There was, among the lower
classes of blacks and whites
a lot of racial amalgamation.
There was a lot of
activity in the grogshops
between blacks and whites,
blacks frequenting taverns.
New York City was a
Cosmopolitan place
with people from various
ethnic groups converging
lots of seamen, and blacks
were very much a part of that.
Narrator: In taverns, black
men illegally gathered, drank
and mingled with white
New York residents.
Many enslaved men in New York
were hired out by their masters.
They had relative
freedom of movement
and control over their own time.
Davis: The African-American
adult male is seen
as the most troublesome,
the most intractable
the most rebellious.
Those are the persons who are
growing in the population.
By law they're not supposed
to be out after sunset;
by law they're not supposed to
have any currency of their own;
by law they're not
supposed to go and gather
in numbers of three or greater;
by law they're not supposed
to be out drinking
yet every night they're out
doing all of these things.
There developed in colonial new
York city a lively street life
amongst black men and...
Enslaved and free.
These black men
organized into clubs
or, uh... gangs
and they were a constant
presence on the streets.
They even gathered at nights
at the docks or in taverns
and they presented, according
to the english authorities
and anxious white
residents, a public threat.
Narrator: On march 18, 1741, a
fire broke out at fort George
the governor's
official residence.
Whipped by violent winds
it burned until a rain
shower cooled the Blaze
keeping it from torching
the entire city.
A week later, another
fire broke out
and then in the next three
weeks, fires raged.
Davis: As this rash occurs
a sense that there is some
evil hand behind this develops
and then people begin
to see a black hand.
They begin to worry that
slaves are behind this
that this is some
act of vengeance
that this is some
prelude to rebellion.
In 1741, england was
now at war with Spain
and many of the colonial
authorities in New York City
feared that the enslaved blacks
would have been influenced
by the promises from
Spain of freedom.
It was the english authorities
who claimed that
they had discovered
a combination between
enslaved blacks
and the lower orders of
white town dwellers...
Transients and vagabonds...
To destroy the town, to
burn it to the ground
and to set up a black
or negro regime
that would owe
allegiance to Spain.
Narrator: Just 30 years
earlier in New York
fire had been instrumental
in the negro plot of 1712
where nine whites were killed and
five were seriously wounded.
Now the city's officials
did not waste any time
finding an explanation for
the mysterious events.
Davis: A general
dragnet goes out
and just about every
African-American male
over 16 years of age
is taken up and put in jail,
crowded under the city hall.
Narrator: The court used the
testimony of Mary Burton
a 16-year-old indentured servant
to accuse the alleged
conspirators.
Burton worked at a tavern
and brothel in the city...
A business that regularly
served black customers.
Promised her freedom
from servitude
Mary Burton started implicating
a constant stream
of men and women
some white, but most
young black men.
For close to four months
black men were dragged into
court off New York's streets.
Washington: New yorkers
are so incensed
over what they conceive
of as a conspiracy
that they create this
wave of paranoia
that leads to incredible murders
and incredible punishments.
It speaks to the whole
entrenchment of slavery
even in the north
and also it speaks to
racial attitudes as well
that they are very much afraid
of racial egalitarianism
and people in the lower echelons
of their society coming together
to form any kind of bond.
Narrator: In may, new yorkers
witness the public execution
of Caesar and prince,
two black men
accused of participating in a
robbery connected to the fires.
Caesar's corpse was then hung
in chains until it decomposed.
From the spring of 1741
through the following winter
and into the spring of 1742
some 160 slaves and at
least a dozen whites
were accused of conspiracy
against the city of New York.
31 africans were put to death,
13 of them burned at the stake
and four whites were hung.
Man: "23 June 1741.
"To Dr. Cadwallader colden
"governor's council,
province of New York.
"Sir, the horrible
executions among you
"puts me in mind of our
new england witchcraft
"in the year 1692.
"I am humbly of the opinion
"that such confessions
are not worth a straw
"for many times they are
obtained by foul means
"by force or torment
"or in hopes of a
longer time to live
"or to die an easier death.
"I entreat you not to go on
making bonfires of the negroes
"and loading yourselves with
greater guilt than theirs.
"For we have too
much reason to fear
"that the divine vengeance
does and will pursue us
"for our ill treatment
to the bodies and souls
of our poor slaves."
Anonymous letter
from Massachusetts.
Narrator: The encroachment of
slavery in American society
that began in Virginia,
culminated in 1750
with the decision to
legalize slavery in Georgia
the last free colony.
It had been a little
over 100 years
since Anthony Johnson first
arrived in Virginia.
Now slavery existed everywhere
in the 13 colonies.
But the argument over who would
be free and who would be equal
had just begun.
For generations to come
slavery would continue to
trouble the soul of America.
Equiano: "When you
make men slaves
"you deprive them of
half their virtue
"you set them in
your own conduct
"an example of fraud and cruelty
and compel them to live with
you in a state of war."
Olaudah equiano,
enslaved African.
Woman: ♪... how came it yours? ♪
♪ Before the pilgrims landed ♪
♪ we were here. ♪
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They came from different lands,
all facing an uncertain future:
English and ashanti
mande and Portuguese
German and ibo
fanti and spaniard
French and Angolan...
Some seeking adventure or
riches or religious freedom.
Others were captives, bartered
and sold like cattle.
Together they would
build a nation
and struggle over the
very meaning of freedom
and create the America we
ha ve inherited toda y.
Woman: I don't think you can
understand race relations today
without understanding slavery.
Even though people will say
"I didn't do it, my
father didn't do it
even my grandparents,
they didn't do it"
one of the things that's
essential is to know
that slavery is not just
a Southern institution.
It's an American institution.
Man: What evolves
in north America
is the belief system
where to be black
meant to be a slave and to be
a slave meant to be black.
Man: "We hold these truths
to be self-evident..."
Why is it self-evident?
It came from god.
They're inalienable, the
government secures them...
Remarkable document, didn't
apply to black folks.
And the man who wrote those
words, Thomas Jefferson
kept slaves.
He also wrote sometime
later to a friend:
"If there is a just god, we're
going to pay for this."
Woman: Slavery and freedom existed
side-by-side in this country.
Did it always have
to be that way?
And the early history of America
indicates that it
probably did not.
Woman: ♪ your country ♪
♪ how came it yours? ♪
♪ Before the pilgrims landed ♪
♪ we were here. ♪
♪ Your country ♪
♪ how came it yours? ♪
♪ Before the pilgrims landed ♪
♪ we were here. ♪
Africans in America
has been made
possible by a Grant
from the national endowment
for the humanities
expanding America's
understanding of who we were
who we are and who we will be.
They were torn from
homes and families
yet they never let go of their
courage and perseverance
and our nation is
stronger because of it.
That's why africans in America
is proudly brought to you
by bankers trust,
architects of value.
A home is more than
four walls and a roof.
It's safer streets...
Better schools...
Stronger communities...
The American dream.
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Helping Americans on the
path to home ownership.
McDonald's is proud to support
this presentation of
africans in America.
Additional funding
is provided by:
And the annual financial support
of pbs viewers like you.
Narrator: In the year 1645, in the
colony that was called Virginia
in the county of northampton,
after a season of disputes
a white man and a black
man went into the field
and there divided their
crop and their land.
According to the
testimony given in court
the man named Anthony, the negro
said, "Mr. Taylor and I
have divided our corn
and I am very glad of it, for
now I know mine own ground."
In America, it seemed,
all men would be equal
all men would be free.
In April 1607, three vessels
carrying 105 colonists
landed at a place
they named jamestown
at the edge of the
Virginia wilderness.
They hoped to establish
the first permanent
english settlement
in the new world.
There englishmen would
build a new promised land
the brave new world that their
poet Shakespeare dreamed...
A free land built by free men.
Man: The dreams were
utopian initially
of colonies without coercion,
without oppression
where each man would be
regarded as free and equal.
There was a lot of
idealism, I think
among the settlements
in the new world
a lot of ideas which I think
didn't stand much the test of...
Experience.
Narrator: Englishmen
believed that their god
had ordained them
to spread his word
and that they had
the god-given right
to drive out all unwilling to
live according to english law.
But in the first two years,
the colonists learned
that they were unprepared for
life in the American wilderness.
Man: "The fourth day of September
died Thomas Jacob sergeant.
"The fifth day, there
died Ben jamin beast.
"Our men were destroyed
with cruel diseases
"as swellings, flixes,
burning fevers, and by wars.
"And some departed suddenly
"but for the most part
they died of mere famine.
"There were never englishmen
left in a foreign country
in such misery as we were in
this new discovered Virginia."
George Percy.
Narrator: In 1609, 500 settlers
lived in the jamestown colony.
By the spring of 1610,
only 60 were left alive.
Man: "About the latter end of
August, a Dutch man-of-war
"arrived at point comfort.
"The commander's
name, captain jope.
"He brought not anything
but 20 and odd negroes
which the governor bought
in exchange for food."
John rolfe, Virginia colonist.
Narrator: In 1619, a year before
the pilgrims landed
at Plymouth rock
a mystery ship appeared
out of a violent storm
off the Virginia coast.
No one recorded the ship's name
but somewhere on the high seas
she had robbed a Spanish vessel
of a cargo of africans.
In search of supplies, she
traded the africans for food.
They had been baptized and
given Christian names.
As christians, they could
not be enslaved for life
under english law.
Like most Europeans
in the colony
they were purchased
to work as servants
for a limited number of years.
The new arrivals supplied
much-needed labor
for the tobacco crop that
was making men rich.
Settlers were planting tobacco
in the streets of jamestown
carving plantations out of
the surrounding wilderness
and shipping some 60,000
pounds a year back to england.
Man: Once tobacco is established
as a viable commodity
then the more land you control,
the bigger profits you can make
and in order to make those
profits, you'd need more labor
and you'd look for that labor
wherever you can find it.
Well, the colony builders
initially intended to rely
almost exclusively on
white indentured servants
as a labor force to
cultivate the crops
that were being
grown in Virginia
principally tobacco.
And in order to create these
raw materials or goods
you often needed labor.
Narrator: The world
the africans entered
was controlled by
wealthy englishmen
and populated by the english poor...
Most under the age of 25.
In return for
passage to Virginia
they had traded four to
seven years of their labor.
They were bound to a master
by an indenture form...
A contract that defined
length of service
and the conditions of servitude.
Most were promised "freedom
dues" after their service...
A bushel of corn, a new suit of
clothes and 100 acres of land.
Under Virginia's
headright system
a planter was entitled
to 50 acres of land for each
servant brought into the colony.
Wood: The issue always was how
long that indenture would be
and under what conditions you
would be forced to work.
At its best, it was a short,
friendly apprenticeship.
At its worst, it was a long
and exploitative situation
in which you might die before
you ever obtained your freedom.
Narrator: By 1622,
3,000 new settlers
drawn by the opportunities
of the tobacco boom
had arrived in Virginia.
Two years later, the first negro
child was born in the colony.
He was named William Tucker,
after a Virginia planter.
The prosperity
that began in 1619
and the dream of a new Eden...
Of people peacefully co-existing
under english law...
Was seriously threatened
in march 1622.
On good Friday, some 30 nations
of the powhatan confederacy
angered by english
violation of land treaties
attacked without warning
and attempted to drive the
english back into the sea.
Along the James river, the
Indians killed 350 colonists.
On the Bennett plantation
alone, 52 people died.
Among the 12 who survived
was a man named Antonio.
Man: Here's an individual
that arrives as one of the
first African Americans
in the history of what
became the United States.
He does what almost no one in
early Virginia managed to do
and that is live.
Everyone is dying of
disease, of violence
and in a sense, he's lucky.
Narrator: He had been brought
to the colony the year before
to work tobacco along
the James river.
His name appeared in the
1625 Virginia census
as "Antonio, a negro."
He was listed as a servant.
Man: He comes to Virginia.
He finds a society that
is just developing.
He's getting in on the
ground floor, as it were.
I don't know if he was able
to immediately envision
that there would be
opportunities for him here
that weren't
available elsewhere.
I don't know that anyone
could have foretold that.
Narrator: When Antonio arrived
the laws of Virginia did not
as yet define racial slavery.
They governed only the
status of servants.
At some point, Antonio changed
his name to Anthony Johnson
and married a negro
servant named Mary
from a neighboring plantation.
She bore him four children.
By 1640, it is clear Anthony and
Mary were no longer servants.
They had acquired their
own modest estate
on Virginia's eastern shore.
Breen: As Johnson prospered,
as he obtained land and cattle
he also acquired
dependent laborers.
What made all this
society go was property.
Your identity in the society was
determined rather obviously
by the amount of land, the
amount of labor that you owned.
Narrator: Anthony Johnson
was en joying privileges
belonging to a free englishman.
He claimed five
workers as headrights
and expanded his
property to 250 acres
along the pungoteague creek.
At least some of his
workers were white.
By 1650, Anthony was one of
400 black people in Virginia
out of a population of
almost 19,000 settlers.
In northampton county,
where Johnson lived
nearly 20 African men
and women were free
and 13 owned their own homes.
Woman: As Anthony Johnson
is accumulating property
it seems as though his
situation is secure.
You get a sense of this
individual, this black man
being treated like
any white planter
and his wife and
daughters being treated
like the wife of a planter.
At an early moment
when men and women were
sorting themselves out
when the rules, the
etiquette of race and labor
were not so clear
at this moment, in one
county in Virginia
it was not foreordained
that race relations
would become what
they did become.
Narrator: In 1640, the year
Anthony Johnson purchased
his first piece of land
three servants had run away
from a Virginia plantation
and headed for Maryland.
Captured and returned
to their owner
they were tried for
breaking their contract.
Man: "The said three
servants shall receive
"the punishment of whipping and
to have 30 stripes apiece.
"One called Victor, a dutchman
"the other a scotchman
called James Gregory
"shall first serve
out their times
"according to their indentures
"and one whole year apiece after
"and after that to
serve the colony
"for three whole years apiece.
"The third being a
negro named John punch
"shall serve his said
master or his assigns
for the time of his
natural life."
Jamestown court recorder.
Narrator: "The time
of his natural life."
According to all the legal
records that survive
no white servant in America
ever received such a sentence.
Davis: So what begins
to happen in the 1640s
is that those who are
controlling the Virginia colony
say to themselves
the fluidity that we've
seen in the past
the fluidity that has
allowed an Anthony Johnson
to serve less than the life term
to acquire his own
piece of ground
to develop a free status
is not something that
we want to project
as going further in the future.
We want to close down
that opportunity.
We want to begin to
show some distinctions.
Narrator: The english definition
of who could be enslaved
began to shift from
non-Christian to non-white.
For Anthony and other
africans in America
the idea of an equal
chance in the colonies
was now under attack.
In 1641, Massachusetts
became the first colony
on the British-American mainland
to recognize slavery as
a legal institution.
Connecticut followed in
1650, Maryland in 1663
New York and New Jersey in 1664.
Virginia legally
recognized slavery in 1661
and a year later, a
Virginia court decided
that all children
born in the colony
would be free or slave according
to the condition of the mother.
In Virginia, slavery
would be defined by race
and perpetuated
through heredity.
Perhaps in the middle
of the 17th century
if you were one of several
thousand africans
living in Virginia
you certainly knew that
your children would be free
you might have that expectation.
And to suddenly find
themselves involved
in lifelong servitude,
and then to realize
that, in fact, their children
might inherit the same status
that was a terrible blow.
That was a terrible
transformation.
Narrator: For the first
50 years of the colony
most of the unfree labor
force had been European
but that was about to change.
Word of the hard
life in Virginia
had gotten back to england
and the colonial government
faced a growing shortage
of servant labor.
Also troubling the colony were
the thousands of free men
most former indentured servants
who were unemployed and
roaming the countryside.
Man: The problem they face
is not only a decreasing
supply of indentured servants
but they face this
increasing problem
of what to do with all
these indentured servants
once they live out their term
and a lot of them
were surviving.
They had to be given land.
They had to be given
their freedom dues
and one of those dues
included even guns
and there was a lot of
unrest in Virginia.
Narrator: In 1661, servants
rebelled in York county.
Two years later
gloucester county authorities
foiled a plot by nine servants
to steal arms and ammunition
and march on the seat
of colonial government.
In 1676, the unrest in Virginia
exploded into civil war.
An army of 500... free men,
servants and slaves...
Rebelled against the colonial
establishment's restriction
on available lands.
They attacked peaceful
Indians, ransacked property
and burned jamestown, sending
the governor into hiding.
Blight: This disorder that the
indentured servant system
had created made racial slavery
to Southern slaveholders
much more attractive
because what were
black slaves now?
Well, they were a permanent,
dependent labor force
who could be... could be
defined as a people set apart.
They were racially set apart.
They were outsiders.
They were strangers, and in
many ways throughout the world
with a couple
possible exceptions
slavery has taken
root especially well
when the people who are enslaved
are defined as
strangers, as outsiders
and can therefore be put into
an inheritable, permanent
status of slavery.
Man: "I understand there
are some slave ships
"expected into York
river now every day.
"I desire you to buy
me five or six slaves
"whereof three or four to be
boys, a man and a woman...
"The boys from eight to 17 or 18
the rest as young as
you can procure them."
William fitzhugh,
Virginia planter, 1681.
Narrator: Few ships
coming from Africa
made the voyage
beyond the Caribbean
to sell their cargoes on the
mainland of British America.
In 1672, the king of
england chartered
the royal African company
encouraging it to expand
the British slave trade.
Shareholders included 15
english lords and 25 sheriffs
the governor of Virginia,
and John Locke...
"The philosopher of Liberty."
In its first 16 years,
the company transported
nearly 90,000 africans
to the americas.
Breen: In the last decade
of the 17th century
it was possible to imagine
that in a single year
the number of new
africans arriving
would equal the total black
population in the colony
or close to it.
These were men and women
that had no sense of the world
they were getting into.
And they seemed to whites as
very alien, foreign, unknowable.
Davis: The Europeans
look upon these people
and they project an image on
them, they project an identity
and that identity is African.
What that means is non-American.
What that means is non-European.
What that means is separation.
Man: "All servants imported
and brought into this country
"who are not Christian
in their native land
shall be counted and be slaves."
Man: "If any slave resists his
master correcting such slave
"and shall happen to
be killed in such
it shall not be
accounted felony."
"If any negro shall
absent himself
"from his master's service
and lie hid and lurking
"and if he shall resist
any person employed
"to apprehend the said negro
"then it shall be
lawful for such person
to kill the said negro."
Virginia general
assembly, June 1680.
Woman: We think about slavery
as this complete package
that just came to
evil landowners
and it didn't happen that way.
It happened one law at a
time, one person at a time.
As landowners felt the need to
control a different behavior
year after year,
they added more laws
until finally 1691
they passed the law
that made it illegal
to free a black slave
unless they were
leaving the colony.
So by then, it was
pretty much set
that this was going to
be a slave society.
Blight: To move from indentured
servitude to racial slavery
means that they're setting
their own history
on a course where freedom is
going to depend on slavery
where the political economy of a
major portion of these colonies
is going to depend on slavery
where the freedom of some
is going to depend on
the bondage of others.
It means that the
American colonies
this Jewel of the British empire
is living this
contradictory history now
of a society that is
increasingly rooted
in a labor system
that's human bondage
that's racial slavery.
Narrator: Anthony Johnson moved
his family out of Virginia
and north to Maryland.
There he leased 300 acres he
called "tonies vineyard."
On that farm, Anthony
Johnson died.
Back in Virginia
a jury decided that the land
Anthony had left behind
could be seized by the state
"because he was a negro and
by consequence, an alien."
Breen: One wonders how
Johnson would have viewed
this changing world of Virginia.
He lived a very long time.
He survived and did quite well
by the standards of the day
in building up properties
hundreds, hundreds of
acres, and cattle.
By the standards of the time
anyone would say
he did quite well.
There's no reason to believe,
as of, say, the 1670s
that the Johnson family is
going to be squeezed out.
Narrator: Within a few years,
Anthony's grandson John
purchased another 44 acres
and in memory of his
grandfather's homeland
called the farm "Angola."
Latimer: By the time the
end of the century came
Anthony Johnson's children
and grandchildren
may well have been
fighting to stay free.
Many free people were
sold into slavery.
No, they couldn't prove
that they were free.
They had no way of
letting anybody know
that they were free
so if a plantation
owner came by and said
"this is my slave and I want
to sell him," you were sold.
Narrator: By the
end of the century
nearly 58,000 people
lived in the colony.
16,000 were listed as negroes.
In 1705, the Virginia
assembly passed laws
clearly defining the distinction
between a slave and a servant
relegating all slaves to
the status of real estate.
The next year
John, the third generation
of Johnsons in America
died without an heir.
That would be the last mention
of the plantation named
for Anthony's birthplace.
Angola plantation, like
the Johnsons themselves
disappeared from the record
books of colonial America.
Man: "The African
trade is a trade
"of the most advantage to
this kingdom of any we derive
"and as it were all profit
"it is indeed the best
traffic the kingdom hath
"as it doth occasionally
give so vast an employment
to our people both
by sea and land."
John Cary, Bristol, england.
Narrator: In 1698, the english
parliament ended the monopoly
of the royal African company
on the African slave trade.
It became the right of every
free-born British subject
to trade in slaves.
Over the next half century
the number of
africans transported
to the British colonies
in British ships
increased from 5,000
to 45,000 a year.
England became the largest
trafficker in slaves
in the western world.
"It is the first principle and
foundation of all the rest"
said one British writer:
"The mainspring of the machine
which sets every
wheel in motion."
He was born ibo...
The son of a tribal elder,
the favorite of his mother.
He died an englishman...
The father of two daughters and
the husband of an englishwoman.
At the age of 11,
olaudah equiano
was kidnapped by africans
and sold to Europeans.
Man: "When the grown people were
gone far in the fields to labor
"the children generally
assembled together to play
"and some of us often used
to get up into a tree
"to look out for any
assailant or kidnapper
that might come upon us."
"One day
"when only I and my sister
were left to mind the house
"two men and a woman
got over our walls
"and in a moment seized us
both without giving us time
"to cry out or to
make any resistance.
They stopped our mouths
and ran off with us."
Olaudah equiano.
Who are we looking for?
Who are we looking for?
It's equiano we're looking for.
Has he gone to the stream?
Let him come back.
Has he gone to the market?
Let him come back.
Has he gone to the farm?
Let him return.
It's equiano we're looking for.
Narrator: For more
than four centuries
people disappeared from the
savannas, the rain forests
and the villages
of black Africa...
Farmers and craftspeople,
commoners and African nobility.
Most were strong young
men, age 15 to 25
but women and children
were also taken and sold.
To obtain slaves,
africans waged war
destroying communities,
stealing people.
To escape the spreading violence
many moved into the interior
abandoning family compounds,
farms, entire villages.
In west Africa
more than 20 million people
were kidnapped into slavery.
Only half would survive
the journey to the coast.
The boy equiano was
one of the survivors.
Equiano: "At last I came to
the banks of a large river.
"I was beyond measure
surprised at this
"as I had never before seen
any water larger than
a pond or rivulet."
"And to my surprise was
mingled with no small fear
"when I was put into
one of these canoes
and we began to paddle and
move along the river."
Narrator: On the
journey to the coast
equiano passed from one
African master to another.
Once he was sold for
172 cowrie shells.
He learned three
different languages
traveled some 800 miles
and encountered
people and customs
unfamiliar and
frightening to him.
After close to seven months
of travel on foot and by boat
he reached the African coast.
Equiano: "The first object
that saluted my eyes
"when I arrived on the coast
was the sea and a slave ship
"which was then riding at anchor
and waiting for its cargo.
"These filled me
with astonishment
but was soon converted
into terror."
Olaudah equiano.
Narrator: It was an
ancient business
this trade in human beings
between Africa and Europe.
50 years before Columbus
sailed to the new world
Portuguese explorers had
sailed to west Africa.
At first seeking gold,
they built a fort in 1482
and called it El Mina, the mine.
The Portuguese pointed their
guns toward the Atlantic
to guard, not against africans
but against European
competitors.
Over time, the
castle changed hands
from the Portuguese to the
Dutch and finally the British
and the trade changed from
gold to human beings.
Man: "Concerning the
trade on this coast
"we notified your
highness already
"that is has completely
changed into a slave coast
"and that nowadays the natives
no longer occupy themselves
"with the search for gold
"but rather make
war on each other
"in order to furnish slaves.
The gold coast has changed
into a complete slave coast."
William de la palma
director, Dutch
west India company.
Narrator: Along the
west coast of Africa
from Senegal in the north to
the cameroons in the south
the Europeans built some
60 forts and castles
warehouses for
European merchandise
and for African slaves.
Called "factories," they
were commercial centers
where agents or "factors"
traded rum, cloth and guns
for human beings and gold.
Man: "The most notable
item is the slave house
"which lies below ground.
"It consists of vaulted cellars
divided into several apartments
which can easily hold
a thousand slaves."
Captain John barbot,
French slave trader.
Narrator: In dungeons built
deep into the ocean rock
people waited, sometimes
a day, sometimes a year.
These chambers would be their
last memory of Africa.
When a slave ship arrived
and anchored off the coast
they would be led out from
the darkness to the beach.
Barbot: "As the slaves come down
to fida from the inland country
"they are put into a booth,
or prison, near the beach.
"When the Europeans
are to receive them
"they are brought out
into a large plain
"where the surgeons
examine every one of them
"all stark naked.
"Each which have passed as
good is marked on the breast
"with a red-hot iron
imprinting the Mark
"of the French, english
or Dutch companies.
"In this, particular
care is taken
that the women, as tenderest,
be not burnt too hard."
Captain John barbot,
French slave trader.
Achebe: The white people
did not need to be present
in the interior of Africa.
All they needed to do was
to supply the weapons.
The people they dealt with were
those coastal peoples
right on the coastline
who controlled the
territory down there.
So equiano would not have
met, maybe not even heard
of white people.
Man: "I have found no place where
I can enlarge my fortune so soon
"as where I now live.
"In this manner, we spend the
prime of youth among negroes
"scraping the world for money,
the universal god of mankind
until death overtakes us."
Nicholas Owen, slave trader.
Unsworth: Europeans died
like flies in that climate.
The average expectation
was three or four years,
you know, really.
And so they had to make
money while they could
because they knew they
didn't have much time
so in that sense, of
course, they were trapped.
They were caught in the web
of the system and held there
and died there.
Narrator: The Europeans made
more than 54,000 voyages
to trade in human beings.
No one will ever know
the exact number of people taken
from the shores of west Africa
but more than 11 million
have been counted
in the records that remain.
Most headed for south America
and the Caribbean islands
some half a million to the
mainland of north America.
Man: "December 29,
1724, no trade today
"though many traders
came on board.
"They informed us
"that the people are
gone to war within land
"and will bring prisoners
enough in two or three days
in hopes of which we stay."
"December 30, 1724, no trade yet
"but our traders came on
board today and informed us
"the people had burnt four
towns of their enemies
so that tomorrow
we expect slaves."
Liverpool surgeon.
Man: "Received on this cargo 46
men, 34 women, 14 boys, six girls
"and 147 chests of corn.
"The rest of the goods
delivered onshore
to cape coast and Accra to Mr.
harbin."
William Dexter, ship's captain.
Narrator: Ship captains
were cautioned
not to buy all their
slaves from one place.
Africans who knew each other,
who spoke the same language
were more likely to
conspire and rebel.
Unsworth: There would be maybe 25
seamen and the ship's officers.
There might have
been a crew of 30
and these 30 had to
control maybe 300 men...
Black men and women... who
were aware of being abducted
and who were desperate
and who were dangerous
because they were obviously
waiting to seize any opportunity
that was offered to rebel
and to take over the ship
and to kill the crew
and that did happen
fairly frequently.
The only way that this
could be contained
was by a system of fear.
Equiano: "I was now persuaded that I
had got into a world of bad spirits
"and that they were
going to kill me.
"Their complexions, too,
differing so much from ours
"their long hair and the
language they spoke
"which was very different
from any I had ever heard
"united to confirm
me in this belief:
"I no longer doubted my fate.
"I asked if we were going to
be eaten by those white men
with horrible looks, red
faces and long hair."
Olaudah equiano.
Narrator: Captains called the voyage
from west Africa to the new world
"the middle passage"...
The middle leg of a
triangular course
that began and ended in Europe.
From english ports,
ships sailed to Africa
to trade goods for slaves.
Then the human cargo was
taken to the americas
and traded for raw materials
which were then carried
back to england and sold.
The crossing from
Africa to the americas
usually took 60 to 90 days
but some voyages took as long
as four or even six months.
Bad weather and sickness could
turn any trip into a nightmare.
Man: The cramped quarters of
ships being packed in such a way
that a slave will be between
the legs of another slave
and having to lie in the feces.
The lack of air.
The longer this trip takes,
the more suffocating.
Man: "The surgeon, upon going
between decks in the morning
"to examine the
situation of the slaves
"frequently finds several dead
"and sometimes a dead
and living negro
"fastened by their
irons together.
"When this is the case, they
are brought upon the deck.
"The living negro is disengaged
and the dead one
thrown overboard."
Alexander falconbridge,
ship's surgeon.
Jones: There are no doubt
people who went mad...
Inability to communicate,
decisions having to be made
and this person is
suffering as yourself.
Does one help?
Does one simply try to make it
the best that one can alone?
Not knowing, where am I being
taken, what is my fate?
For weeks, months, depending
what the point of origin was.
Equiano: "One day, two
of my wearied countrymen
"who were chained together
"somehow made it
through the nettings
"and jumped into the sea.
"Immediately another
quite dejected fellow
"also followed their example
"and I believe many more would
have very soon done the same
"if they had not been
prevented by the ship's crew
who were instantly alarmed."
Olaudah equiano.
Unsworth: The idea, I think was
that the slave cannot
be allowed to die
by his own will and intention.
He cannot be allowed
to die voluntarily.
If he's going to die, it must
be at the hands of his captors
so that in that case he doesn't
spread a dangerous example.
Man: "Monday, 11 December.
"By the favor of
divine Providence
"made a timely discovery today
"that the slaves were forming
a plot for insurrection.
"Surprised two of them
"attempting to get
off their irons
"and in their rooms found
knives, stones, shot, etc.
"And a cold chisel.
"There appeared eight
principally concerned
"in protecting the mischief
"and four boys in supplying them
with the above instruments.
"Put the boys in irons and
slightly in the thumbscrews
to urge them to a
full confession."
Captain John Newton.
Man: "We stood in arms,
firing on the revolted slaves
"of whom we killed
some and wounded many.
"And many of the most mutinous
"leapt overboard and drowned
themselves in the ocean
with much resolution."
James barbot, english
sailor, 1701.
Equiano: "Often did I think many
of the inhabitants of the deep
"much happier than myself.
"Every circumstance I met with
"served only to render
my state more painful
"and heighten my apprehensions
and my opinion of the
cruelty of whites."
Olaudah equiano.
Unsworth: The slavers,
they knew at one level
that these were human beings
because they were obviously,
clearly, human beings.
At the same time, they
were objects of profit
and those two concepts couldn't
obviously be really reconciled
and they never were reconciled.
It was just I think
that the humane...
The sense of the humanity
of these people...
Was simply suppressed
for the sake of gold.
And the shocking thing
is that human beings
are able indefinitely
to suppress the urgings
of their common humanity
and to deny it for the
sake of making profits.
Equiano: "Is not the slave trade
entirely a war with the heart of man?
"And surely that which is begun
"by breaking down the
barriers of virtue
"involves in its continuance
destruction to every principle
and buries all
sentiment in ruin."
Olaudah equiano.
Narrator: The middle
passage ended for equiano
on the island of Barbados...
One of the most profitable
colonies in the British empire.
On Barbados, it was calculated
that it was cheaper to
work slaves to death
and replace them with new slaves
than to treat them humanely.
Within three years of arrival
one out of three
slaves would die.
The boy equiano, judged too
small to cut sugar cane
was shipped north to the
mainland of British America.
On the mainland, the
plantation system of Barbados
was admired and imitated
particularly on the
Carolina coast.
Man: South Carolina was started
as the colony of a colony.
Barbados had become
overpopulated
with the younger sons of english
merchants and with their slaves
and in both cases
they began to look around,
cast around for new places
and within the first decade
after south Carolina's
initial settlement
there were just loads of
immigrants from Barbados
who brought with them
slaves from Barbados
but more important than
just bringing slaves
unlike Virginia, they brought a
fully conceived idea of slavery.
Narrator: On the shores of the
Ashley river stands middleton place
home to one of Carolina's
oldest families.
Middleton family members
were destined to become part
of the Carolina elite...
A governor, a congressman
a signer of the declaration
of independence.
The family had been among
the first settlers
arriving from Barbados in 1678
with a land Grant in goose creek
just 14 miles north
of Charleston...
Carolina's slave-trading center.
By 1706, a second
generation of middletons
had almost tripled the size
of the family's landholdings
to 5,000 acres of
Carolina wilderness.
At age 25, young
Arthur middleton
was master of the
oaks plantation.
Man: "Dear Sarah... Mr.
Arthur middleton
"is married to my sister
"and was a schoolfellow with
me when I was at Carolina.
"He is a sensible man and one
of the richest in the country
with upwards of 100 negroes."
Thomas amory.
Wood: Racial slavery turns out
to be extraordinarily profitable
for the people who
have seized control.
The planter can
complain in his diary
that it's been a bad
year or the crop is weak
or the rainy season
lasted too long
but year in and year out
tremendous profits
are being made.
Narrator: The immigrants
from Barbados
had searched for a cash crop
that would make them rich.
Families like the middletons found it...
It was rice.
The most prized
africans in Carolina
were from Angola, sene-Gambia
and the windward coast...
People who brought the
rice-growing skills
the Europeans did not have.
Man: "Rice is the
most unhealthy work
"in which the slaves
were employed
"and they sank under
it in great numbers.
"The causes of this
dreadful mortality
"are the constant moisture
and heat of the atmosphere
"together with the alternate
floodings and drying
"of the fields on which the
negroes are perpetually at work
"often ankle-deep in mud
with their bare heads exposed
to the fierce rays of the sun."
Captain basil hall.
Man: "Many masters
can't be persuaded
"that negroes and Indians
are otherwise than beasts
"and use them like such.
"I daily perceive that
many things are done here
out of a worldly principle,
little for god's sake."
Francis lejau,
anglican minister.
Narrator: In 1706, the middletons
donated four acres of land
for a church in goose creek.
Francis lejau, the first
full-time anglican minister
was not opposed to slavery
but he preached that all men...
Regardless of color...
Had immortal souls.
He earned a reputation for
spending time with the negroes
baptizing and teaching
them to read the Bible.
He spoke out often against
the brutality of
Carolina slaveholders
who were seeking to control the
growing population of africans.
Lejau: "I have had of late
"an opportunity to
oppose with all my might
"a very unhumane law in
relation to runaway negroes.
"Such a negro must be mutilated
"by amputation of
testicles if it be a man
"and an ear, if a woman.
"I have openly declared
against such a punishment
grounded upon the law of god."
Francis lejau.
Washington: The
anglican missionaries
probably described
the black community
better than anyone at the
time in early Carolina.
They described it as a
nation within a nation.
The africans lived separated
from the rest of society.
Being freshly from Africa, their
frame of reference was African.
They were very much familiar
with this kind of
subtropical environment
that they found themselves
in in Carolina.
They're still communities
of people who live, love
raise children and work, and
they feel that as people
as humans, they have a
right to come and go.
They have a right to visit
their wives and their husbands
on other plantations.
It was, as one traveler
said, "a negro country."
Man: "Their numbers
increase every day
"as well by birth
as importation.
"And in case there should arise
a man of desperate courage
"exasperated by a
desperate fortune
"he might kindle a servile war.
"Such a man might be
dreadfully mischievous
"before any opposition could
be formed against him
and tinge our rivers as wide
as they are with blood."
William byrd, Virginia planter.
Narrator: In 1710, just 15 years
after rice took hold in Carolina
africans began to outnumber
Europeans in the colony.
As the number of africans Rose
so, too, did white
fear and retaliation.
Equiano: "Mr. D. Told me once
"he cut off a negro man's
leg for running away.
"I asked him if the man
had died in the operation
"and how he, as a Christian
"could answer for the
horrid act before god
"and he told me
"answering was a thing
of another world.
What he thought and
did were policy."
"He then said his scheme
had the desired effect:
It cured that man and some
others of running away."
Olaudah equiano.
Wood: If you're a
white authority
you're constantly
trying to figure
how tightly you want
to impose the lid
with respect to
people running away.
How fierce should the
punishments be, you know?
Should it be a whipping?
Should it be the loss of a
finger or a hand or a foot?
You know, should it be wearing
shackles perpetually?
The entire system of control is
based on physical punishment
often making examples
out of people
so that others will
be intimidated.
Narrator: The colonial
legislature passed laws
designed to more tightly control
the growing black majority.
Planter records reveal
punishments inflicted
for infractions large and small.
Byrd: "8 February, 1709.
"I Rose at 5:00 this morning
then read a chapter in Hebrew
"and 200 verses in
homer's odyssey.
"I ate milk for breakfast.
"I said my prayers.
"Jenny and Eugene were whipped.
"17 April... anaka was whipped
yesterday for stealing the rum
"and filling the
bottle up with water.
"I said my prayers and
I danced my dance.
"Eugene was whipped again
for pissing in bed
"and Jenny for concealing it.
"I took a walk about
the plantation.
"Eugene was whipped
for running away
"and had the bit put on him.
"I said my prayers.
"I had good health, good
thoughts and good humor.
Thanks be to god almighty."
William byrd, Virginia planter.
Washington: When you
enslave a person
in some ways you become
a slave yourself
because masters and slaves
are natural enemies
and that's what the
Europeans had to deal with.
They had to deal with a
population living amongst them
sometimes the majority of the
population, in hostility.
They lived amongst enemies.
And as one Carolina planter said
"nowhere on earth is
mankind so plagued
by enemies living within them
as we are in our own homes."
Man: "The Spanish are
receiving and harboring
"all our runaway negroes.
"They have found out a new way
"of sending our own
slaves against us
"to Rob and plunder us.
"We are not only
at a vast expense
"in guarding our
Southern frontiers
but the inhabitants are
continually alarmed."
Arthur middleton,
acting governor, 1728.
Narrator: On the south
Carolina frontier
word spread of
africans and Indians
coming up from Spanish
Florida to attack planters
and of Spanish authorities
offering runaways freedom
on Florida soil.
In goose creek, an anglican
minister complained
of "secret poisonings and
bloody insurrections
by certain Christian slaves."
Wood: South Carolina is a
pot ready to boil over.
Imagine coming into a setup
that seems almost unbearable
and finding that people have...
Many of them have
somehow rationalized it
or are enduring it, that's
the best they can do.
But you as a newcomer might feel
"I'm not going to
put up with this.
Better to die trying
to change this."
And there must have been
hundreds of people like that
in south Carolina in the 1730s.
Narrator: By the 1730s,
close to 2,000 africans
were arriving at the port
of Charleston each year.
From 1735 to 1739, out
of 11,000 slaves landed
more than 8,000 were
listed as Angolans.
Davis: What develops is
a sense among Europeans
that slaves from certain areas
have particular characteristics.
Slaves from the Angola area
are reputed among the english
to be particularly difficult
to be rebellious.
Narrator: In St. Paul's parish
there were close to a
thousand new people
who just a few years before
had been taken from the
Angola region of Africa.
Wood: One of them, we only know
his name, a man named jemmy
apparently had come
recently from Angola.
He may not even
have spoken english
but he may have had strong
contacts with other Angolans.
He had to try to build alliances
not only with other Angolans,
other new arrivals
but with other africans,
African Americans
people from a community that
he was not that familiar with
and apparently he succeeded.
Narrator: During the early morning
hours of September 9, 1739
almost as soon as word is
received in south Carolina
that england and
Spain are at war
some 20 Angolan slaves, led
by the man named jemmy
began marching toward St.
augustine
and the promise of freedom.
Just 30 miles from the
middleton's oaks plantation
at the stono bridge, they
seized a general store
where there were
arms and powder.
They killed the storekeepers
and left their heads
on the doorstep.
Wood: What better moment
to start an uprising
and try to strike out for St.
augustine
and find freedom in Florida
in the hope that the
Spanish authorities
are willing to Grant freedom
to english-speaking slaves
who escape from the
carolinas into Florida.
Narrator: On the march south
the africans did not kill
every white they encountered.
They spared Mr. Wallace
an innkeeper they knew to
be kind to his slaves.
But before the day ended, they
had killed more than 20 people.
As other slaves joined them
they became an army
of almost a hundred
camped at the edisto river
waiting for others to
gather under their flag.
Davis: The entire force
of english north America
was going to come down on them
because this was an issue
not merely for those
in south Carolina
immediately surrounding
this area.
This was an issue for
every European colonist
everywhere in the colonies
to quash this and to provide
some exemplary punishment.
Narrator: Around noon, the nearest
white settlers were alerted.
By 4:00 in the afternoon
they caught up with the negroes
along the edisto river
and fired upon them.
Eyewitnesses recorded that
the rebels fought boldly
but at least 14 were killed or
wounded in the first attack.
Others were surrounded,
questioned and then shot.
The armed colonists then
turned toward Charleston
and on mile posts along the way
they left the heads
of the executed men.
Wood: Just the way war
transforms people
this terrible transformation
into race slavery
had changed people by the
middle of the 18th century.
The violence you see at stono
is a violence that had become
pervasive in the culture.
By the middle of
the 18th century
this had become a way of life
in the english colonies.
Washington: Stono was sort of
the beginning of the concept
that the black population had
to be utterly controlled
and the legislation that came
out of stono, the negro act
took away whatever liberties
the africans had.
Narrator: Freedom of movement,
freedom of assembly
to earn money, to learn to
read, all were outlawed.
South Carolina imposed duties
on all slave importations
and encouraged
European immigration
in order to change the
ratio of whites to blacks.
The negro act became the
model for slave laws
throughout the mainland
of British America.
Equiano: "Why do you use those
instruments of torture?
"Are they not fit to be applied
"by one rational
being to another?
"And are you not struck with
shame and mortification
"to see the partakers of
your nature reduced so low?
"But above all
"are there no dangers attending
this mode of treatment?
Are you not hourly in dread
of an insurrection?"
Olaudah equiano.
Narrator: News of the rebellion
traveled quickly to New York
now the third largest
city in British America.
Most of Manhattan island
was unbroken wilderness
crossed by streams emptying into
both the Hudson and east rivers.
By 1740, except for
Charleston, south Carolina
no city in colonial America
had so high a density of slave
population as New York.
Crowded onto the Southern tip of
the island lived 11,000 people
of which more than
2,000 were black.
Foote: There was really an illusion
of intimacy between enslaved blacks
and their white slave owners
who lived under the same roof.
These people could not
trust one another.
In fact, the slave owners
considered the enslaved blacks
domestic enemies.
Man: "New York,
November 18, 1731.
"Be it ordained by the
authority of this city
"that all negro, mulatto
and Indian slaves
"that shall die within this
city be buried by daylight.
"And for the prevention of
great numbers of slaves
"assembling and meeting
together at their funerals
"under pretext whereof they
have great opportunities
"of plotting and confederating
together to do mischief
"be it further ordained
that not above 12 slaves
shall assemble or meet
together at the funeral."
Minutes of the common
council of New York.
There were probably a lot
of other issues going on
in New York City at that time
that made whites
suspicious of blacks.
There was, among the lower
classes of blacks and whites
a lot of racial amalgamation.
There was a lot of
activity in the grogshops
between blacks and whites,
blacks frequenting taverns.
New York City was a
Cosmopolitan place
with people from various
ethnic groups converging
lots of seamen, and blacks
were very much a part of that.
Narrator: In taverns, black
men illegally gathered, drank
and mingled with white
New York residents.
Many enslaved men in New York
were hired out by their masters.
They had relative
freedom of movement
and control over their own time.
Davis: The African-American
adult male is seen
as the most troublesome,
the most intractable
the most rebellious.
Those are the persons who are
growing in the population.
By law they're not supposed
to be out after sunset;
by law they're not supposed to
have any currency of their own;
by law they're not
supposed to go and gather
in numbers of three or greater;
by law they're not supposed
to be out drinking
yet every night they're out
doing all of these things.
There developed in colonial new
York city a lively street life
amongst black men and...
Enslaved and free.
These black men
organized into clubs
or, uh... gangs
and they were a constant
presence on the streets.
They even gathered at nights
at the docks or in taverns
and they presented, according
to the english authorities
and anxious white
residents, a public threat.
Narrator: On march 18, 1741, a
fire broke out at fort George
the governor's
official residence.
Whipped by violent winds
it burned until a rain
shower cooled the Blaze
keeping it from torching
the entire city.
A week later, another
fire broke out
and then in the next three
weeks, fires raged.
Davis: As this rash occurs
a sense that there is some
evil hand behind this develops
and then people begin
to see a black hand.
They begin to worry that
slaves are behind this
that this is some
act of vengeance
that this is some
prelude to rebellion.
In 1741, england was
now at war with Spain
and many of the colonial
authorities in New York City
feared that the enslaved blacks
would have been influenced
by the promises from
Spain of freedom.
It was the english authorities
who claimed that
they had discovered
a combination between
enslaved blacks
and the lower orders of
white town dwellers...
Transients and vagabonds...
To destroy the town, to
burn it to the ground
and to set up a black
or negro regime
that would owe
allegiance to Spain.
Narrator: Just 30 years
earlier in New York
fire had been instrumental
in the negro plot of 1712
where nine whites were killed and
five were seriously wounded.
Now the city's officials
did not waste any time
finding an explanation for
the mysterious events.
Davis: A general
dragnet goes out
and just about every
African-American male
over 16 years of age
is taken up and put in jail,
crowded under the city hall.
Narrator: The court used the
testimony of Mary Burton
a 16-year-old indentured servant
to accuse the alleged
conspirators.
Burton worked at a tavern
and brothel in the city...
A business that regularly
served black customers.
Promised her freedom
from servitude
Mary Burton started implicating
a constant stream
of men and women
some white, but most
young black men.
For close to four months
black men were dragged into
court off New York's streets.
Washington: New yorkers
are so incensed
over what they conceive
of as a conspiracy
that they create this
wave of paranoia
that leads to incredible murders
and incredible punishments.
It speaks to the whole
entrenchment of slavery
even in the north
and also it speaks to
racial attitudes as well
that they are very much afraid
of racial egalitarianism
and people in the lower echelons
of their society coming together
to form any kind of bond.
Narrator: In may, new yorkers
witness the public execution
of Caesar and prince,
two black men
accused of participating in a
robbery connected to the fires.
Caesar's corpse was then hung
in chains until it decomposed.
From the spring of 1741
through the following winter
and into the spring of 1742
some 160 slaves and at
least a dozen whites
were accused of conspiracy
against the city of New York.
31 africans were put to death,
13 of them burned at the stake
and four whites were hung.
Man: "23 June 1741.
"To Dr. Cadwallader colden
"governor's council,
province of New York.
"Sir, the horrible
executions among you
"puts me in mind of our
new england witchcraft
"in the year 1692.
"I am humbly of the opinion
"that such confessions
are not worth a straw
"for many times they are
obtained by foul means
"by force or torment
"or in hopes of a
longer time to live
"or to die an easier death.
"I entreat you not to go on
making bonfires of the negroes
"and loading yourselves with
greater guilt than theirs.
"For we have too
much reason to fear
"that the divine vengeance
does and will pursue us
"for our ill treatment
to the bodies and souls
of our poor slaves."
Anonymous letter
from Massachusetts.
Narrator: The encroachment of
slavery in American society
that began in Virginia,
culminated in 1750
with the decision to
legalize slavery in Georgia
the last free colony.
It had been a little
over 100 years
since Anthony Johnson first
arrived in Virginia.
Now slavery existed everywhere
in the 13 colonies.
But the argument over who would
be free and who would be equal
had just begun.
For generations to come
slavery would continue to
trouble the soul of America.
Equiano: "When you
make men slaves
"you deprive them of
half their virtue
"you set them in
your own conduct
"an example of fraud and cruelty
and compel them to live with
you in a state of war."
Olaudah equiano,
enslaved African.
Woman: ♪... how came it yours? ♪
♪ Before the pilgrims landed ♪
♪ we were here. ♪
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