From First Contact to Civil War

From First Contact to Civil War

History 300 African American History

Professor Daniel Finn

Strayer University Online

August 7, 2016

From First Contact to Civil War

Africa, identified as the second largest continent in the world is the original home of many men, women, and children brought to the “new world” United States. Many people believe African Americans were equally traded throughout Africa's continent regardless of the city. However, most black Americans derived from Western African cities. West Africans once traded amongst themselves until approximately 800 CE when western Sudanese empires successively dominated the area to establish the modern era (Clark-Hines, Hines, Harrold, (2014)). These actions led to Arab merchants and Islamic believers entering the region (Clark-Hines, Hines, Harrold, (2014)). African-Americans from colonial through Civil War survival's are inextricably rooted in West African traditions due to colonist adapting too and utilizing Western Africa rich cultures and the Atlantic Slave Trade. West Africa's heavily diversified nation, full of people of varies backgrounds, cultural practices, different languages, domesticated animals, and cultivated crops between 1000 BCE and 200 CE was attractive to slave traders (Clark-Hines, Hines, Harrold, (2014)).  Africans were familiar and well versed in raising sheep, cattle, poultry, maintaining steady trades; such as being artisans. No one can separate West African traditions from African-Americans from colonial years through the Civil War (Clark-Hines, Hines, Harrold, (2014)).

In addition to economic advancements/developments, West African traditions led to a major slave trade system. Roughly around 1691 a severely damaged Dutch shipped named the “White Lion” arrived with 20 kidnapped Africans to a once Isolated British settlement Island off the coast of Chesapeake Bay, in Virginia. The Dutchman aboard introduced the first captured Africans to colonist of colonial Jamestown. The captives were hungry, but the Dutchman could not feed them, the British settler fed the Africans, but it came with a price. Africans were to settle their debt by working for the colonist in their tobacco fields, and once they paid them in full they were "free".  Tobacco production and profits were high, thus paving the way for greed and inhumane treatment of West Africans brought to the new land.

These actions lead to the foundation of slavery overall American colonies and the events that followed almost destroyed the existence of this nation (Bigelow, n.d.).

Aspects of African culture that survived and manifested themselves in the daily lives of both free and enslaved African-Americans occurred in the mid-nineteenth century, the formation of abolitionism and new corrupt legislations. 1961-1965 the years of great debates surrounding slavery abolition movements; which later caused the Civil War that some people felt were a waste of time. Although the war produced the ending of slavery, African Americans lives resulted in little to no change. In most cases, the abolition of slavery made situations worse for blacks. Due to racial inequality; that was generated through the creation of Jim Crow Laws (Rees, 2013).  These laws were implemented to limited, eliminate, and hinder the rights of Negros. Additionally, some blacks were lost and unable to function without the governance of their masters or were still working for them. Violence was another issue African Americans encountered after the war. They had to worry about white American groups such as the Ku Klux Klan (KKK) and other Caucasian League groups who refused to adjust to the new world order and sought to strip them of anything dignity that remained. Although blacks were supposedly free, they faced many hardships after the industrialization of the civil war. White politicians enforced laws to harm blacks while hate organizations committed crimes; such as lynching, raping, wrongfully accusing, beating, arresting, and burning blacks. The precise movement to end the Atlantic slave trade and free slaves left many people feeling like the Civil War resulted in a “Lost Cause.”