From: Anonymous Seven
Date: 2/7/00
Time: 1:54:26 PM
Remote Name: 155.247.59.13
Anonymous Seven History: Week Four Text Assignment How and why did African slavery get started in North America? What did slavery mean for African culture? African slavery in North America was started mainly for economic reasons. With the Native Americans facing extermination and white servants disappearing, the Europeans found that Africans would qualify for the position of cultivating rice, sugar, and tobacco. The Spanish and Portuguese colonies in the South American and Caribbean areas ran a successful slave labor operation that had mostly young African males performing hard physical labor on plantations. As the English found that this practice would benefit their colonies financially they also found another way to spread their religion. The English saw the Africans religion and behavior as everything that Christianity was against. The planters stood by the argument that the loss of freedom would benefit the slaves as they convert from savages to Christians. Slavery had varied effects on African culture in America. While blacks in the North escaped the hard labor most of their native culture escaped them. They were living in homes where they could not find ways to hold to the African heritage that they once had a connection to. At the same time southern blacks that were hard labor slaves merged the English culture forced upon them with their native culture creating a hybrid in both language and religion. This is reflected in the Creole language and the black Christianity that incorporated intense feeling with music and folk art.