culture Book ver final 5 - Flipbook - Page 100
Black Freedom
That urge for Black freedom threatened the entire White power structure from the beginning
and it reacted to the growing number of Africans in the colonies. Long before July 4, 1776, it
was illegal for Africans to participate in American culture. In 1705, Kendi wrote, “Massachusetts
authorities forbade interracial relationships, began taxing imported captives, and … rated
Indians and Negroes with horses and hogs” during a revision of its tax code. “Virginia
lawmakers made slave patrols compulsory for non-slaveholding Whites and seized and sold all
property owned by ‘any slave.’
“The same story would be told many times in American history: Black property legally or
illegally seized that resulted in Black destitution was blamed on Black inferiority. Past
discrimination was ignored when blame was assigned. Virginia’s 1705 code mandated that
planters provide freed White servants with fifty acres of land. The resulting White prosperity
was then ‘attributed to White superiority,’” Kendi wrote.
Resilience throughout time
In this pattern we see the resilience and emergence of Black culture. Though every roadblock
was placed in front of Black people, they still survived. Between 1500 and 1866, nearly 12.5
million Africans, endured the Middle Passage of the transatlantic slave trade. About 1.8 million,
died during the journey, packed like sardines below decks of unventilated ships.
Once in the Americas, though called shiftless and lazy, they worked 10 hours a day, six days a
week, and more during planting season in conditions described as “Hell on Earth.” Slave owners
would hire out their skilled Black carpenters and blacksmiths and pocket the money. Though
said to be incapable of learning, laws were still enacted making education illegal for Blacks.
Following the Civil War during Reconstruction, African Americans were finally free to establish
families and communities, all in the face of racial terrorism.
Blacks have survived every blow, from slavery to Jim Crow segregation, to the assassination of
Black leaders and the imprisonment of Black youth and blatant police violence. Blacks have
been redlined, educated in subpar schools, and still survived. Black culture is rooted in survival.
Black culture exemplifies the “Can do” spirit of their ancestors like those who revolted in the
Stono Rebellion in 1739 in South Carolina to Salem Poor who fought in the Battle of Bunker Hill
during the Revolutionary War to the 1st Kansas Colored Volunteer Infantry Regiment, the first
Black regiment to fight in the Civil War to the six million Blacks, fleeing the oppression of the
South, pulled up stakes and fled North and West from 1910 to 1970.
As the Black community enters the third decade of the 21st Century, marking more than 400
years on this continent, with all of its challenges from within and without, it continues to exhibit
a culture of survival, the most basic culture of all.
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