Research a prominent African American who lived during the 1800s. In a multi-paragraph essay, explain his or her achievements and historical importance.
Answers
Africans assisted the Spanish and the Portuguese during their early exploration of the Americas. By the 1660s large numbers of Africans were being brought to the Thirteen Colonies. In 1790 Black people numbered almost 760,000 and made up nearly one-fifth of the population of the United States.
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Answer:
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Explanation:
Africans assisted the Spanish and the Portuguese during their early exploration of the Americas. In the 16th century some black explorers settled in the Mississippi valley and in the areas that became South Carolina and New Mexico. The most celebrated black explorer of the Americas was Estéban, who traveled through the Southwest in the 1530s. The uninterrupted history of blacks in the United States began in 1619, when "twenty and odd" Africans were landed in the Virginia Colony. These individuals were not enslaved but indentured servants—persons bound to an employer for a limited number of years—as were many of the settlers of European descent (whites). By the 1660s large numbers of Africans were being brought to the Thirteen Colonies. In 1790 Black people numbered almost 760,000 and made up nearly one-fifth of the population of the United States.
In 1619, the first enslaved Africans were brought to Point Comfort on a Dutch slave ship,[10] today's Fort Monroe in Hampton, Virginia, 30 miles downstream from Jamestown, Virginia. They were kidnapped by Portuguese slave traders.[11] The Virginian settlers treated these captives as indentured servants and released them after a number of years. This practice was gradually replaced by the system of chattel slavery used in the Caribbean.[12] As servants were freed, they became competition for resources. Additionally, released servants had to be replaced.[13]
This, combined with the still ambiguous nature of the social status of Black people and the difficulty in using any other group of people as forced servants, led to the relegation of Black people into slavery. Massachusetts was the first colony to legalize slavery in 1641. Other colonies followed suit by passing laws that passed slavery on to the children of slaves and making non-Christian imported servants slaves for life.[13]
Africans first arrived in 1619, when a Dutch ship sold 19 blacks to Virginian settlers at Point Comfort (today's Fort Monroe), thirty miles downstream from Jamestown, Virginia. In all, about 10–12 million Africans were transported to the Western Hemisphere. The vast majority of these people came from that stretch of the West African coast extending from present-day Senegal to Angola; a small percentage came from Madagascar and East Africa. Only 5% (about 500,000) went to the American colonies. The vast majority went to the West Indies and Brazil, where they died quickly. Demographic conditions were highly favorable in the American colonies, with less disease, more food, some medical care, and lighter work loads than prevailed in the sugar fields.[14]
At first the Africans in the South were outnumbered by white indentured servants, who came voluntarily from Europe. They avoided the plantations. With the vast amount of good land and the shortage of laborers, plantation owners turned to lifetime enslavement of African peoples who worked for their keep but were not paid wages and could not easily escape. Enslaved Africans had some legal rights (it was a crime to kill an enslaved person, and a few whites were hanged for it.) Generally the enslaved Africans developed their own family system, religion and customs in the slave quarters with little interference from owners, who were only interested in work outputs. Before the 1660s, the North American mainland colonies were expanding, but still fairly small in size and did not have a great demand for labour, so the colonists did not import large numbers of enslaved Africans at this point.[citation needed]