American Yawp / Feedback

this is very bad

Morgan — and others, including John Thornton — show that those first “20 Negars and then some” were not exactly unfree. Or if they were, they were as “unfree” as poor white indentured servants from England were.  Virginia colonists baptized those first 20 men from Africa (who were traded for food). According to English law, a person who was baptized could not be enslaved. This would change, of course.  See “The Terrible Transformation,” part of the PBS series, Africans in the Americas.

The story of Anthony Johnson is instructive. He arrived in the VA colony somewhere around 1619. He was baptized and he somehow managed to survive his term of servitude (unlike most in the first generations of the colony — the colony was a death trap). Johnson got his freedom dues and at some point he purchased “head rights” so that by 1655 he owned a modest plantation on which he grew tobacco. That  was the year that one of his servants, a black man from Africa named Cesar, sued Johnson for his freedom. Cesar lost. Significant is that the local magistrate not only heard the case between two black men, but less significant is that he ruled in Johnson’s favor.

When I teach Morgan and I pull out this primary source it doesn’t take long for my students to figure out why the magistrate ruled in Johnson’s favor: he was a landowner.

Colonists were still working out how racial inferiority and slavery was going to operate in the colony (and also neighboring colony of Maryland). You begin to see this gradually; but after Bacon’s Rebellion in 1676 planters begin to move toward racialized slavery faster and systematically for a variety reasons, not least of which was that they wanted to continue to exploit workers to produce cash crop and at the same time mitigate the possibilities for interracial uprisings against the ruling elites.

Is this what’s now called Oregon State, or the Oregon Territory?

This chapter does not mention anything about Native Americans becoming citizens of The United States for the first time ever.

If mentioned, please disregard.

The end of this paragraph mentions “containment” for the first time. What that means is never defined anywhere in the chapter.

It seems as though this section indicates that the rise of American cotton is directly responsible for the advent of the modern fashion system, which is not the case. “Fashion” – where styles change for change’s sake – has been present since the 1400s. People have been wearing decoration on their apparel that goes beyond utility since apparel was developed.

The use of the word “honest” seems disingenuous as well – all clothing has a function (to cover the body; to differentiate gender, age, status, etc; to protect from the elements…). What does “honest” refer to?

“Pogroms” is the correct word here. A pogrom is an organized riot/massacre. I’ve only ever heard the term used in this specific situation, where Europeans planned the wholesale destruction of a Jewish community.

The date range in the title of this primary source should read “1819-1820,” not 1920 as appears here and on the page with the document itself.

The separation of Panama from Colombia took place in 1903, not 1901.

The last 2 sentences read “Americans cringed at Nick Ut’s wrenching photograph of a naked Vietnamese child fleeing an American napalm attack. More and more American voices came out against the war.”

Surely the photograph in question should be included, at the very least, in the Primary Sources that accompany this chapter.