1619 Jamestown
- 20 Africans arrive as indentured servants
- arrive in English colony aboard Dutch ship
1660 Slave Trade
- Caribbean
- British and Dutch supplant Spanish rule
- West Indies: 100,000 slaves
- American colonies: 5,000 slaves
1725 Slave Coast
- British name for region of West Africa
- The Fon Kingdom of Dahomey
- Present day Benin
1746 Lucy Terry
- "Bar's Fight"
- Ballad about conflict between colonists and Native Americans
- excerpt:
Eunice Allen see the Indians coming
And hopes to save herself by running
And had not her petticoats stopped her
The awful creatures had not catched her
Nor tommy hawked her on the head
And left her on the ground for dead
1754 Banneker Clock
- Benjamin Banneker, creator
- self-taught scientist
- constructs first clock made entirely of American parts
1770 Crispus Attucks
- Black Seafarer
- First colonist killed in the Boston Massacre
1778 Revolutionary War
- Continental Army
- African Americans: 5,000 enlist as Regulars
1789 Olaudah Equiano
- Publishes autobiography
- Details experience while being enslaved
- excerpt:
I was soon put under the decks, and there I received such a salutation in my nostrils as I had never experienced in my life; to that, with the loathsomeness of the stench, and crying together, I became so sick and low that I was not able to eat, nor had I the least desire to taste anything.
I now wished for the last friend, death, to relieve me, but soon, to my grief, two of the white men offered me eatables; and, on my refusing to eat, one of them held me fast by the hands, and laid me across I think the windlass, and tied my feet, while the other flogged me severely.
1790 U.S. Census
- Black Population: 757,208
- 19.3% of total population
- 59,557 free people
- Slavery abolished in New England
1793 Cotton Gin
- Gin - short for engine
- Eli Whitney, inventor
- efficient processing makes cotton extremely profitable
- Southern cotton industry rapidly expands
- Demand for slave labor dramatically increases
- U.S. Congress enacts Fugitive Slave Law
- Crime to harbor an escaped slave
1803 South Carolina
- Reopens ports to slave commerce
- Vast new lands developed to serve growing cotton market
- Labor demand drives up slave prices
love
dad
© Tom Taylor
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