COLONIAL LIFE

     In 1607, the first English settlement in America was established in Jamestown, Virginia. The settlers were desperate for labor needed to push inland to clear forests and cultivate the land.

     A short-lived attempt to use Indians as laborers proved unsuccessful; the Indians were not able to adopt to large-scale farming operations and many died in the fields.

     The search for labor then focused upon White Englishmen who were brought to the colonies as indentured servants. Most of them were poor. Others were convicted felons who signed contracts as servants to escape imprisonment. In return for passage to America they agreed to serve as bondsmen for seven years.

     As the colonies grew and prospered it became increasingly clear that the supply of bondsmen would be inadequate.

     Then in 1619, a Dutch war ship sailed into Jamestown harbor. The captain needed food for his crew. To pay for the food, he offered the colonists 20 
Africans. The colonists quickly accepted because there was much work to be done.

    It should be noted, and emphasized here, that those 20 human beings came ashore as bondsmen. They were consigned as indentured servants with the same contracts for servitude to work as the White Englishmen. That is, that after a period of seven years they would be released.

     Bondsmen, by law, had certain rights. They were not chattels in the same sense as those who were slaves. They could be (and often were) traded and sold to new holders.  In the case of those who were sold to new holders who attempted, by various devices, to lengthen their period of bound service, they could sue for illegal detention. A slave, under then existing English laws, had no legal status; he could not sue, be sued, or give testimony.
     
     This fact is supported by Virginia court records which documents that in 1624, John Phillips, one of the 20 Africans, was a witness in  a lawsuit. This firmly establishes that Black people came to the shores of America, and lived during  early colonial times as indentured servants, and not as slaves.

     Anthony Johnson, for example, came to Virginia as an indentured servant. In time he became free and even brought White indentured servants from England to work  for him.

   

COMING TO AMERICA

     During the 1500s, slave ships brought more than 250,000 Africans to the Americas. At first, most slaves were shipped to islands in the Caribbean where they were sold and put to work on huge sugar plantations. Soon the rapidly developing trade was spread throughout North and South America.

     Life for the enslaved Africans was hard, and many died within a few years, but there were always more to take their place. The supply seemed endless to the plantation owners and slave traders. The word of this steady supply traveled quickly.

     Soon farmers, plantation owners, and other crop growers in the American colonies also wanted Black workers. This was due in part because the Native Americans, called Indians, whom they were using as workers, died by the thousands from the hard labor, as well as the diseases they had caught from the Europeans. Others ran away. The need for an adequate supply of  labor was in huge demand.

     When a slave ship arrived in a city of the American colonies, it was a great event. The news was shouted throughout the streets by the town crier. The local newspapers printed stories and ran classified ads for sales on human cargo. People hurried to the auction blocks to see the new arrivals.

     The haggard Black slaves, dressed in  rags, could not understand the strange language these white people spoke. They did not know what would happen to them in this new world in which they found themselves. It would not be long, however, before they  would come to an understanding of what coming to America was all about.

IN THE BEGINNING...

     The genesis of the Black community started aboard the slave ships transporting enslaved Africans from their homeland to America. In Africa, they had lived a varied life. Women, as well as, men were skilled farmers and traders.

They played interesting kinds of music. Their story-tellers passed along famous tales and poems in the oral tradition. African artists made beautiful masks, statues, and gold jewelry.

In the early 1400s, Europeans began traveling beyond their own lands looking for new wealth. The Portuguese began trading for gold in West Africa. But then, they discovered something worth more than gold. They began trading the Africans as slaves to plantation owners in the New World.

Soon the slave trade became a big business. Local African tribal chiefs captured their own people from neighboring tribes and traded with the Europeans from England, Holland, Spain, and Portugal for knives, cloth, guns, and other cheap goods.

The captured Africans were chained together and packed on narrow wooded shelves on board the ship. The filth and stench was terrible, and thousands of Africans died from diseases. The trip across the Atlantic took two months or more.


From about 1492 to 1776, more than 6.5 million people traveled across the Atlantic to the so-called New World. Millions more died during this terrible journey across the ocean, which is now called The Middle Passage.


Yet it was here that the Black community began, because despite their African tribal differences, including language and cultural traditions, they all had one thing in common:

They were being taken away from their homeland against their will. So they came together based on this commonality and decided how they would deal with it.

 Most often they rebelled by jumping into the ocean to their deaths, choosing to die rather than be enslaved. Those who did not, bonded together and helped each other to survive the arduous trip across the Atlantic. They shared food, water  and prayers to their gods, and  by whatever means they could, they made it to the other side.

ABOUT "SUNDOWN TO SUNUP"

 SUNDOWN TO SUNUP , is based on a book by George P. Rawick in which he demonstrates that Black slaves developed their own social structures,  an awareness of their situation, and the means to survive within it. In doing so, they started the process which made the Black community into what it is today.

Upon  arrival in this country, the Black slave toiled on the plantation from SUNUP TO SUNDOWN working for the white slave master. He was forced to abandon his African past, and was not taught how to communicate with each other in this new environment.  These were the conditions of slave life in the United States. 

But from SUNDOWN TO SUNUP ,the slave created his own world. Under the new conditions in which he lived, he started social institutions and used behavior patterns within this foreign community, to replace the old African cultural traditions. By these means, he was able to survive the pressures to become creatures of his master's will, and thus prevented himself from becoming an absolute victim. The building of important social structures such as schools, churches, and civic organizations made it possible for the slave to build a new Black community. This blog will focus on  HOW THAT COMMUNITY WAS CREATED.