From: Danielle Ayers
Date: 2/9/00
Time: 9:41:41 PM
Remote Name: 155.247.154.37
Danielle Ayers February 7, 2000 History 67
Text Assignment: Week 4 Unity and Disunity: The Great Awakening How and why did African slavery get started in America? What did slavery mean for the African culture?
Slavery became needed in America because the Native Americans were being killed off, and the white indentured servants had served their time. Africans were unwillingly brought over to the New World to grow rice, sugar and tobacco. The Spanish and Portuguese colonies turned the English on to the concept of slavery, even though the mother country had long ceased the practice. It was mostly an economic decision. For fifty years, the English settlers did not define how long the Africans would be enslaved to them. There were not enough of them to be worried about control. However, during the seventeenth century, Virginia declared the Africans slaves for life, as well as their children. The system became increasingly stricter, as the white colonists became frightened of the colored people. In the southern colonies, blacks had great interaction with each other, and formed their own Creole and African languages. In the North, where there were not as many blacks, their exposure to their culture was much more limited. Blacks began to form their own culture, not European or African but African American. They took some of the European aspects of Christianity and made it colorful and exciting. It is sad that some of the African Americans looked down upon the “New Negroes” that came to America. By the eighteenth century, blacks were able to reproduce successfully. They grew into a class all their own, and so began the African culture.