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Drawing The Color Line Chapter Summaries

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Chapter 2, “Drawing the Color Line “expresses how slavery began in the Americas. The first slaves in America were brought over by ship to Virginia. These people who were brought to the Americas were listed as “servants”, but they were viewed very differently from the white servants and were treated more like slaves. Because of the combination of inferior status and derogatory thought we call racism, the inferior position of blacks in America remains for the next 350 years. Virginians of 1619 were desperate for labor because they needed to grow enough food to stay alive to avoid another starving time. Originally, the people of Virginia wanted to use the Indians as laborers for subsistence farming, but because they were so “tough, resourceful, …show more content…

The African slave trade was very harsh for many reasons. This is because the idea of capture/sale was inhumane, blacks were kept in cages, conditions of ships were horrible, and one out of every three blacks died on the way over. By 1800, ten to fifteen million blacks had been transported as slaves to the Americas; while in Africa, fifty million human beings lives' were lost to death and slavery in those years. Blacks were easier to enslave than whites and Indians, but still were trouble to keep under thumb. These Afro-Americans rebelled by often running away and attempt to find family or sabotaging their work. Fear of slavery was a permanent fact of plantation life. The first large-scale revolt in North American colonies took place in New York in 1712, in which twenty-five blacks and two Indians set fire to a building and killed nine whites that had showed up at the scene. Because of this, twenty-one of them were executed. To conclude, the enslavement of the blacks in the Americas was completely unjust, but "It was a kind of class consciousness, a class fear" that made them believe that what they were doing to the helpless blacks was …show more content…

The people of the colonies in America found that “by creating a nation, a symbol, a legal unity called the United States, they could take over land, profits, and political power from favorites of the British Empire.” The first of many uprisings and riots that led towards overthrowing the English government of the colonies was Bacon’s Rebellion in Virginia in 1760. The strong new leadership class supported these rebellions against England. While on the other hand, the lower classes remained resentful and turned their non-approval to the colonial elite. Consequently, the poor started plundering the houses of the rich. However, The Boston Massacre, the Boston Tea Party, and the public tarring and featherings were more focused on the overthrow of the colonial government. These revolutionary movements in the colonies led to the signing of the Declaration of Independence in 1776. This declared the independence for the colonies against the English for good. Shortly after, the Boston Committee of Correspondence ordered a military draft of the townsmen in preparation for war. The wealthy were able to buy their way out of this by paying for a substitute for them, while the poor and less fortunate were forced to serve in the military. “Tyranny is tyranny let it come from who it may.” This statement was shouted from the colonies’ townspeople.

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