How early US history helped shape Black culture and our De Jure claim on Southern States
In the earliest years of the colonies, slavery operated through religion as a status. Non-Christians could be enslaved. Africans, Indigenous people and Europeans alike were held under the same system of servitude. That changed when enslaved Africans began converting to Christianity. The European powers only used Christianity as an excuse to enslave indigenous people around the world where their empires had expanded. So when indigenous people started converting that had undermined their entire labor market, the Southern Gentry responded by rewriting the laws where the intended goal was to keep the labor system intact by preserving slavery.
Religion is often used as the primary explanation for slavery in America. However history shows us the Quakers opposed slavery early and organized abolitionist networks. In 1537 the Pope denounced the enslavement of Indigenous people. Black churches later became operational hubs for abolitionists and civil rights organizers. Slaveholders shifted justifications when needed from religion to pseudoscience in an attempt to protect their power structure.
In 1640, the John Punch case marked a legal turning point. Three indentured laborers attempted escape: two European, one African. The Europeans were sentenced to four more years of labor. Punch was sentenced to bondage for life. That ruling placed a permanent, legal distinction between the two populations. From that moment forward, ancestry would dictate freedom.
In 1662, Virginia legislators passed partus sequitur ventrem, which linked a child’s legal status to the status of the mother. Virginia turned Human beings into generational property. The law created a permanent hereditary class of exploited labor, and it depended on determining who was categorized as “negro.”
The invention of whiteness came later.
In 1676, Bacon’s Rebellion united Africans, poor Europeans, and Indigenous people against wealthy landowners. The uprising showed the colonial elite that laborers, when aligned, were capable of challenging their authority. In response, elites distributed privileges and legal advantages to Europeans as they withdrew them from Africans and Indigenous people. Whiteness emerged as a political category tied to hierarchical elitism. Even if those whites had no access to property, just being white meant he was akin to those who did and that alone could make a poor white man feel alright about his position in society.
In 1705, the Virginia Slave Codes brought the system into full coherence.
The codes defined Africans as property and positioned Europeans as a protected class. Before this moment, race existed loosely. After the codes, race was clearly defined. Before this Black people would sue for freedom based on a plethora of reasons. Elizabeth Grinstead sued for her freedom citing her mother being a white woman technically made her white and she won her case, Another woman known as Hannah sued her enslaver citing “great cruelty and oppression” and presumed to have won her case also.
But then the 1705 Slave codes introduced the first "one drop rule" and legalized the murder of black people. Furthermore the Slave Codes introduced the first Blood Quantum laws laying down the foundation of the systemic efforts to divide blacks and Indians. Basically these early Blood laws allowed for Indians that were mixed with whites to be deemed as white as long as they were less than one quarter Indian, and any Indian with any black ancestry whatsoever would be classified as a negro or Mullato and there for could be legally enslaved. This encouraged many tribes who tried to assimilate into European culture to distance themselves from the black identity while other tribes who remained in resistance saw Black people as a natural ally. Some of the most famous being the Seminole, Lumbee, Shawnee and some Choctaw bands. These tribes would ally with Maroon communities and sometimes absorb them into their tribes.
Maroon communities were black rebel villages, some as large as ten thousand people, that throughout the South, held land, formed governments, and defended themselves until the end of the civil war.
The drive to preserve power shaped relationships with Indigenous nations in the Southeast. Under U.S. pressure, the Cherokee, Choctaw, Chickasaw, and Creek, adopted plantation agriculture while some of these tribes even adopted chattel slavery. The Seminole Nation chose a different path, accepting escaped and rebel negroes into their communities as Black Seminoles. The U.S. government responded with forced removal and the Seminole wars which they had never surrendered and are one of the few indigenous nations that is located on their original homeland.
In 1808, the United States banned the importation of enslaved Africans. Not for altruistic reasons but to strengthen internal trade and increase the monetary value of enslaved people born in the U.S. It also removed the influence of newly-arrived Africans who carried languages, cultures, and military knowledge that slaveholders perceived as dangerous. Despite these adversities, Black people built culture. Blackness became a cultural identity shaped through endurance, resistance, creativity, and shared struggle.
By the early 20th century the Great Migration began. It was in large part a response to domestic terrorism. Six million Black Americans moved across the country to secure safety and opportunity. Today, their descendants exist as a dispersed nation inside a nation, much like our Maroon ancestors.
So what should we do today?
It means now we have to start building a political party that is dominated by us.
We wont have to placate conservatives, or accept the "lesser evil" from the democrats. We will build a political institution where our own leaders may emerge from. Developing leadership internally, setting clear objectives and answering to our people first. With political structure we can defend our economic growth. Then unified politically and self sufficient, we will be able to demand our homeland here in the United States of America.
Political organization gives direction.
Economic strategy gives leverage.
and land gives permanence.
Economic strategy gives leverage.
and land gives permanence.
These are the pillars of real power.
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Diouf, Sylviane A. Slavery’s Exiles: The Story of the American Maroons. New York University Press, 2014.
Landers, Jane. Black Society in Spanish Florida. University of Illinois Press, 1999.
Usner, Daniel H. Indians, Settlers, and Slaves in a Frontier Exchange Economy: The Lower Mississippi Valley Before 1783. University of North Carolina Press, 1992.
Gallay, Alan. The Indian Slave Trade: The Rise of the English Empire in the American South, 1670–1717. Yale University Press, 2002.
Virginia. Act Concerning Servants and Slaves. Laws of Virginia, Oct. 1705, Chapter IV.
Hening, William Waller, The Statutes at Large; Being a Collection of All the Laws of Virginia, vol. 3, pp. 252–266, 1823.
