Journey through Slavery ep 1/4 — Terrible Transformation

Documentary that examines the transatlantic slave trade which took place across the Atlantic Ocean from the 16th through to the 19th centuries. The transatlantic slave trade was responsible for one of the largest forced human migrations in record history.

They came from different lands
all facing an uncertain future.

English and Ashanti,
Mandi and Portuguese

German and ???

Fanti and Spaniard

French and Angolan,

some seeking adventure

or riches or religious freedom.

Others were captive, bartered
and sold like cattle.

Together they would build a nation

and struggle over
the very meaning of freedom

and create the America
we have inherited today.

I don't think you can understand
race relations today

without understand slavery.

Even though people will say,

"I didn't do it, my father didn't do it
even my grandparents, they didn't do it",

one of the things that is essential

is to know that slavery is not just
a southern institution,

it is an American institution.

What evolves in North America
is a belief system

where to be black meant
to be a slave and a beast,

a slave meant to be black.

"We hold these truths to be self-evident.

"Why is it self-evident?

"They came from God.
They are inalienable.

"The government secures them".

Remarkable document.

Didn't apply to black folks,

and the man who wrote them,
those words, Thomas Jefferson,

kept slaves.

He also wrote, sometime later,
to a friend,

"If there is a just God,
we are going to pay for this".

Slavery and freedom existed
side by side in this country.

I think the issue is, did it always
have to be that way?

And the early history of America
indicates that it, probably, did not.

(African song)

In the year 1645, in the colony
that was called Virginia

in the county of Northampton,

after a season of dispute,
a white man and a black man

went into the field and there
divided their crop and their land.

According to the testimony
given in court,

the man named Anthony the Negro said,

"Mr. Taylor and I have divided our corn

"and I am very glad of it
for now I know my own ground".

In America it seemed
all men would be equal

all men would be free.

In April 1607, three vessels
carrying 105 colonists

landed at a place they named Jamestown,

at the edge of the Virginia wilderness.

They hoped to establish the first
permanent English settlement

in the New World.

There, Englishmen would build
a new promised land,

the brave New World

that their poet Shakespeare dreamed,

a free land built by free men.

The dream was utopian initially,

colonies without coercion,
without oppression,

where each man would be regarded
as free and equal.

There was a lot of idealism, I think,
in the early settlements

and in the New World.

A lot of idealism, which did not
stand much to the test of experience.

Englishmen believed that their God
had ordained them to spread his word

and that they had the God-given right
to drive out all unwilling

to live according to English law.

But in the first two years
the colonies learned

that they were unprepared
for life in the American wilderness.

"The fourth day of September
died Thomas Jacobson, sergeant.

"The fifth day died Benjamin Beast

"all men destroyed with cruel diseases

"of swellings, flexes, burning fevers
and by wars.

"Some departed suddenly

"but, for the most part,
they died of mere famine.

"There was never an English man
left in a foreign country

"in such a misery, as we were
in this new discovered Virginia".

— George Percy.

In 1609, 500 settlers lived
in the Jamestown colony.

By the spring of 1610,
only 60 were left alive.

"Abouts the latter end of August

"a Dutch man of war
arrived at Point Confort.

"The commander's name was
Captain Joke.

"He brought not anything
but 20 and odd negroes

"which the governor bought
in exchange for food".

— John Rolfe, Virginia colonist.

In 1619, a year before the Pilgrims
landed at Plymouth Rock,

a mystery ship appeared out of
a violent storm off the Virginia coast.

No one recorded the ship's name

but somewhere on the high seas
she had robbed a Spanish vessel

of a cargo of Africans.

In search of supplies, she traded
the Africans for food.

They had been baptized
and given Christian names.

As Christians, they could not
be enslaved for life, under English law.

Like most Europeans in the colony,
they were purchased

to work as servants for a limited
number of years.

The new arrival supplied
much needed labor

for the tobacco crop
that was making men rich.

Settlers were planting tobacco
in the streets of Jamestown,

carving plantations
out of the surrounding wilderness

and shipping some 60 000 pounds a year
back to England.

Once tobacco was established
as a viable commodity,

then the more land you control,
the bigger profits you can make

and in order to make those profits,
you'd need more labor

and you look for that labor
wherever you can find it.

The colony builders initially
intended to rely

almost exclusively on white
indentured servants

as a labor force to cultivate the crops

that were being grown in Virginia,
principally tobacco.

And in order to create these raw materials
of goods you often needed labor.

The world the Africans entered
was controlled by wealthy English men

and populated by the English poor,

most under the age of 25.

In return for passage to Virginia

they had traded four to seven years
of their labor.

They were bound to a master
by an indenture form, a contract,

that defined the length of service

and the conditions of servitude.

Most were promised freedom dues
after their service,

a bushel of corn, a new suit of clothes

and 100 acres of land.

Under Virginia's headright system
a planter was entitled to 50 acres of land

for each servant brought into the colony.

The issue always was how long
that indenture would be

and under what conditions
you would be forced to work.

At its best it was a short
friendly apprenticeship

at its worst it was a long
and exploitative situation

in which you might die
before you ever obtained your freedom.

By 1622, 3000 new settlers,
drawn by the opportunities

of the tobacco boom,

had arrived in Virginia.

Two years later, the first negro child
was born in the colony.

He was named William Tucker.
after a Virginian planter.

The prosperity that began in 1619,
and the dream of a new Eden

of people pacifically coexisting
under English law,

was seriously threatened in March 1622.

On Good Friday, some 30 nations
of the Powhatan confederacy

angered by English violations
of land treaties

attacked without warning

and attempted to drive the English
back into the sea.

Along the James River,
the Indians killed 350 colonists.

On the Bennett plantation alone,
52 people died.

Among the 12 who survived
was a man named Antonio.

Here is an individual that arrives
as one of the first Africans in Americas

in the history of what became
the United States.

He does what almost no one
in early Virginia managed to do

and that is live.

Everyone that's dying of disease,
violence and since he is lucky...

He had been brought to the colony
the year before

to work tobacco along the James River.

His name appeared in the 1625
Virginia census, as Antonio, a negro.

He was listed as a servant.

He comes to Virginia, finds a society
that is just developing,

he is getting in on the ground floor
as it were.

I don't know if he was able
to immediately envision

that there would be opportunities
for him here

that were not available elsewhere,

I don't know that anyone
could foretold that.

When Antonio arrived,
the laws of Virginia

did not as yet defined racial slavery.

They governed only
the status of servants.

At some point, Antonio changed his name
to Anthony Johnson

and married a negro servant
named Mary from a neighboring plantation.

She bore him four children.

By 1640, it is clear Anthony and Mary
were no longer servants.

They had acquired their own modest estate
on Virginia's eastern shore.

As Johnson prospered,
as he obtained land and cattle,

he also acquired dependent laborers.

What made all this society go
was property.

Your identity on the society
was determined rather obviously

by the amount of land,
the amount of laborers

that you owned.

Anthony Johnson was enjoying privileges
belonging to a free English man.

He claimed five workers as head right
and expanded his property

to 250 acres along the Ponga Teague Creek.

At least some of his workers were white.

By 1650, Anthony was
one of 400 black people

in Virginia, out of a population
of almost 19 000 settlers.

In North Hampton County,
where Johnson lived,

nearly 20 African men and women were free

and 13 owned their own homes.

As Anthony Johnson
is accumulating property,

it seems as though his situation is secure.

You get a sense of this individual,
this black man

being treated like any white planter

and his wife and daughters
being treated like the wife of a planter.

At an early moment, when men and women
were sorting themselves out

when the rules the etiquette of race, labor,
were not so clear,

at this moment in one county,
in Virginia,

it was not foreordained
that race relations would become

what they did become.

In 1640, the year Anthony Johnson
purchased his first piece of land,

three servants had run away
from a Virginia plantation

and headed for Maryland,

captured and returned to their owner.

They were tried for breaking the contract.

"The said three servants shall receive
the punishment of whipping

"and have 30 stripes apiece.

"One called Victor, a Dutchman,

"the other a Scotsman,
called James Gregory,

"shall first serve out their times
according to their indentures

"and one whole year apiece after.

"And after that, to serve a colony
for three whole years apiece.

"The third, being a negro
named John Punch

"shall serve his said master or his assigns
for the time of his natural life".

— Jamestown court recorder

"The time of his natural life".

According to all the legal records
that survived

no white servant in America
ever received such a sentence.

So, what it begins to happen in 1640s

is that those who are controlling
the Virginia colony say to themselves.

"The fluidity that we have seen in the past,

"the fluidity that has allowed
an Anthony Johnson

"to serve less than a life term,

"to acquire his own piece of ground,

"to develop a free status,

"is not something that we want
to project as going further in the future.

"We want to close down that opportunity.

"We want to begin
to show some distinctions".

The English definition
of who could be enslaved

began to shift from non-Christian
to non-white.

For Anthony and other Africans in America

the idea of an equal chance
in the colonies, was now under attack.

In 1641, Massachusetts
became the first colony

on the British American mainland

to recognize slavery
as a legal institution.

Connecticut followed in 1650,

Maryland in 1663,

New York and New Jersey in 1664.

Virginia legally recognized slavery in 1661

and a year later, a Virginia court decided

that all children born in the colony
would be free or slave

according to the condition of the mother.

In Virginia, slavery
would be defined by race

and perpetuated through heredity.

Perhaps in the middle of the 17th century

if you were one of several thousand
Africans living in Virginia

you certainly knew
that your children would be free,

you might have that expectation

and to suddenly find themselves
involved in lifelong servitude

and then to realize that in fact

their children might inherit
the same status

that was a terrible blow,

that was a terrible transformation.

For the first 50 years of the colony

most of the unfree labor force
had been European

but that was about to change.

Word of the hard life in Virginia
had gotten back to England

and the colonial government faced
a growing shortage of servant labor,

also troubling the colony,

where the thousands of free men
most former indenture servants

who were unemployed
and roaming the countryside.

The problem they face is not only
a decreasing supply of indentured servants

but they face this increasing problem
of what to do

with all these indentured servants
once they leave out their term

and a lot of them were surviving,

they had to be given land,

they had to be given their freedom dues

and one of those dues included even guns

and there was a lot of unrest in Virginia.

In 1661, servants rebelled in York County.

Two years later, Gloucester County authorities

foiled a plot by nine servants
to steal arms and ammunition

and march on the seat
of colonial government.

In 1676, the unrest in Virginia
exploded into civil war.

An army of 500 free men,
servants and slaves

rebelled against the colonial establishment's
restrictions on available land.

They attacked peaceful Indians,
ransacked property

and burned Jamestown,

sending the government into hiding.

This disorder that the indentured
servant system had created

made racial slavery to southern
slaveholders much more attractive

because what were black slaves now?

Well, they were a permanent,
dependent labor force,

who could be defined
as the people set apart.

They were racially set apart,
they were outsiders, they were strangers.

And in many ways throughout the world

with a couple possible exceptions
slavery has taken root especially well

when the people who are enslaved
are defined as strangers, as outsiders,

and can therefore be put into
an inheritable permanent status of slavery.

"I understand there are some slave ships
expected into York River now every day.

"I desire to buy me five or six slaves.

"Whereof three or four to be boys,
a man and a woman.

"The boys from 8 to 17 or 18,

"the rest as young as you can procure them".

— William Fitzhugh, Virginia planter, 1681.

Few ships coming from Africa
made the voyage beyond the Caribbean

to sell their cargoes on the mainland
of British America.

In 1672, the king of England chartered
the Royal African Company

encouraging it to expand
the British slave trade.

Shareholders included 15 English Lords
and 25 sheriffs, the governor of Virginia

and John Locke, the philosopher of liberty.

In his first 16 years, the company

transported nearly 90 000 Africans
to the Americas.

In the last decade of the 17th century

it was possible to imagine
that in a single year

a number of new Africans arriving

would not equal the total
black population in the colony

are close to it.

These were men and women

that had no sense of the world
they were getting into

and they seemed to whites
as very alien foreign unknowable.

The Europeans look upon these people
and they project an image on them.

They project an identity
being that identity, he is African,

what that means, he is not American,

what that means, he is not European,

what that means is separation.

"All servants imported and brought
into this country

"who were not Christian
in their native land

"shall be counted and be slaves.

"If any slave resists his master
correcting such slave,

"and shall happen to be killed in such,

"it shall not be accounted felony.

"If any negro shall absent himself
from his master's service

"and hiding and lurking

"and if he shall resist any person
employed to apprehend the said negro,

"then it shall be lawful for such person
to kill the said negro".

— Virginia General Assembly, June 1680.

We think about slavery
as this complete package

that just came to evil landowners.

It did not happen that way.

It happened one law at a time,
one person at a time

and as landowners felt the need
to control a different behavior,

year after year, they added more laws

until, finally, in 1691,
they passed the law

that made it illegal
to free a black slave,

unless they were leaving the colony.

So, by then, it was pretty much set
that this was going to be a slave society.

To move from indentured servitude
to racial slavery

means that they are setting
their own history

on a course where freedom
is going to depend on slavery

where the political economy
of a major portion of these colonies

is going to depend on slavery

where the freedom of some

was going to depend
on the bondage of others.

It means that the American colonies
of this jewel the British Empire is living

this contradictory history now

of a society that is increasingly rooted
on a labor system that is human bondage

that is racial slavery.

Anthony Johnson moved
his family out of Virginia

and north to Maryland.

There he leased 300 acres
he called Tony's Vineyard.

On that farm, Anthony Johnson died.

Back in Virginia, a jury decided
that the land Anthony had left behind

could be seized by the state
because he was a negro

and by consequence an alien.

One wonders how Johnson would have
viewed this changing world of Virginia

he lived a very long time,
he survived and he did quite well

by the standards of the day,

of building up properties
hundreds of acres and cattle.

By the standards of the time
anyone would say he did quite well.

There is no reason to believe,
as the 1670s,

that the Johnson family is going
to be squeezed out.

Within a few years,
Anthony's grandson John

purchased another 44 acres and,
in memory of his grandfather's homeland,

called the farm Angola.

By the time the end of the century came,

Anthony Johnson's children
and grandchildren

may well have been fighting to stay free.

Many free people were sold into slavery.

No, they could not prove
that they were free.

They had no way of letting anybody
know that they were free

so, if a plantation owner came by
and said,

"This is my slave and I want to sell him",

you were sold.

By the end of the century,

nearly 58 000 people
lived in the colony

16 000 were listed as negroes.

In 1705, the Virginia Assembly passed laws

clearly defining the distinction
between a slave and a servant,

relegating all slaves to the status
of real estate.

The next year, John, the third generation
of Johnsons in America,

died without an heir.

That would be the last dimension
of the plantation

named for Anthony's birthplace.

Angola plantation,
like the Johnsons themselves,

disappeared from the record books
of colonial America.

"The African trade is a trade
of the most advantage

"for this kingdom of any ???

"and as it were all profit, it is indeed
the best traffic the kingdom has

"as it does occasionally give
so vast employment to our people

"both by sea and land".

— John Kerry, England.

In 1698, the English Parliament
ended the monopoly

of the Royal African Company
on the African slave trade

It became the right of every freeborn
British subject to trade in slaves.

Over the next half century,
the number of Africans

transported to the British colonies
in British ships

increased from 5000 to 45 000 a year.

England became the largest trafficker
in slaves in the Western world.

It is the first principle
and foundation of all the rest

that one British writer
"the mainspring of the machine

"which sets every wheel in motion".

He was born Igbo, the son
of a tribal elder,

the favorite of his mother.

He died an Englishman,
the father of two daughters

and the husband of an English woman.

At the age of eleven, Olaudah Equiano
was kidnapped by Africans

and sold to Europeans.

Olaudah Equiano

Olaudah Equiano

"When the grown people were gone
far in the fields to labor

"the children generally
assembled together to play

"and some of us often used
to get up into a tree

" to look out for any
assailant or kidnapper

"that might come upon us.

"One day, when only I and my sister
were left to mind the house

"two men and a woman
got over our walls

"and in a moment seized us both
without giving us time to cry out

"or to make any resistance.

"They stopped on mounds
and ran off with us".

— Olaudah Equiano.

Who are we looking for?
who are we looking for?

It is Equiano we are looking for.

Has he gone to the stream?
Let he come back.

Has he gone to the market?
Let him come back.

Has he gone to the farm?
Let him return.

It is Equiano we are looking for.

For more than four centuries

people disappeared from the savannas,
the rain forest, and the villages

of the black Africa.

Farmers and craftspeople,
commoners and African nobility.

Most were strong young men,
aged 15 to 25

but women and children
were also taken and sold.

To obtain slaves, Africans waged war,

destroying communities
stealing people.

To escape the spreading violence
many moved to the interior,

abandoning family compound,
farms and entire villages.

In West Africa, more than 20 million
people were kidnaped into slavery.

Only half would survive
the journey to the coast.

The boy Equiano was one of the survivors.

"At last I came to the banks of a large river,

"I was beyond measure
surprised at this

"as I had never before seen
any water larger than a pond or river.

"And my surprise was mingled
with no small fear

"when I was put into one of these canoes

"and we began to paddle
and move along the river".

On the journey to the coast,

Equiano passed
from one African master to another.

Once he was sold for 172 cowry shells.

He learned three different languages,

travelled some 800 miles

and encountered people and customs
unfamiliar and frightening to him.

After close to seven months of travel
on foot and by boat,

he reached the African coast.

"The first object that saluted my eyes
when I arrived on the coast was the sea

"and a slave ship which
was then riding at anchor

"and waiting for its cargo.

"This filled me with astonishment
but was soon converted into terror".

— Olaudah Equiano.

It was an ancient business,
this trade in human beings

between Africa and Europe.

Fifty years before Columbus
sailed to the New World,

Portuguese explorers had sailed
to West Africa, at first seeking gold.

They built a fort in 1482
and called it El Mina, a mine.

The Portuguese pointed their guns
toward the Atlantic

to guard not against Africans
but against European competitors.

Over time, the castle changed hands
from the Portuguese to the Dutch

and finally, the British

and the trade changed
from gold to human beings.

"Concerning the trade on this coast
we notified Your Highness already

"that it has completely changed
into a slave coast

"and that nowadays the natives
no longer occupy themselves

"with the search for gold

"but rather make war on each other
in order to furnish slaves.

"The Gold Coast has changed
into a complete Slave Coast".

— William de la Palma,
director, Dutch West India Company.

Along the west coast of Africa,

from Senegal in the north
to the Cameroons in the south,

the Europeans built
some 60 forts and castles,

warehouses for European merchandise
and for African slaves,

called factories.

They were commercial centers
where agents or factors traded

ram, cloth and guns
for human beings and gold.

"The most notable item is the slave house
which lies below ground.

"It consists of vaulted cellars
divided into several apartments

"which can easily hold a thousand slaves".

— Captain John Barbot,
French slave trader.

In dungeons built deep
into the ocean rock,

people waited, sometimes a day,
sometimes a year.

These chambers would be
their last memory of Africa.

When a slave ship arrived
and anchored off the coast

they would be led out
from the darkness to the beach.

"As the slaves come down
to feed of from the inland country

"they are put into a booth or prison
near the beach.

"When the Europeans had received them

"they are brought out into a large plain

"where the surgeons examine
every one of them,

"all stark-naked.

"Each which have passed as good,
is marked on the breast with a red-hot iron

"imprinting the mark of the French,
English or Dutch companies.

"In this, particular care is taken
that the women, as tenderest,

"to be not burnt too hard".

— Captain John Barbot,
French slave trader.

The white people did not need
to be present in the interior of Africa.

All they needed to do
was to supply the weapons

the people they dealt with

those coastal peoples
right on the coastline

who controlled the territory down there.

So, Equiano would not have met,
maybe not even heard of white people.

"I have found no place
where I can enlarge my fortune so soon

"is where I now live in this manner.

"We spent the prime of youth
among negroes

"scraping the world for money.

"The universal God of mankind
until death

"overtakes us".

— Nicholas ???, slave trader.

Europeans died like flies in that climate.

The average expectation
was three or four years,

and so, they had to make money
where they could.

because they knew they did not
have much time

so, in that sense, of course,
they were trapped.

They were caught in the web of the system

and held there and died there.

The Europeans made more
than 54 000 voyages

to trade in human beings.

No one will ever know the exact number
of people taken from the shores

of West Africa

but more than 11 million
have been counted

in the records that remained.

Most headed for South America
and the Caribbean Islands,

some half a million to the mainland
of North America.

"December 29th, 1724.

"No trade today, though many traders
came on board.

"They informed us that the people
are gone to war with inland

"and will bring prisoners enough
in two or three days

"in hopes of which we stay".

"December 30th, 1724.

"No trade yet, but our traders
came on board today

"and informed us the people
had burned four towns of their enemies

"so that tomorrow we expect slaves".

— Liverpool ???

"Received in this cargo 46 men,
34 women, 14 boys, 6 girls

"and 147 chests of corn.

"The rest of the goods delivered on shore

"to Cape Coast and Accra, to Mr. Harbin".

— William Dexter, ship's captain.

Ship captains were cautioned
not to buy all their slaves from one place.

Africans who knew each other,
who spoke the same language

were more likely
to conspire and rebel.

There would be maybe 25 seamen
and the ship's officers

there might have been a crew of 30

and these 30 had to control

maybe 300 black men and women

who were aware of being abducted

and who were desperate
and who were dangerous

because they were obviously
waiting to seize any opportunity

that was offered to rebel
and to take over the ship

and to kill the crew

and that did happen fairly frequently.

The only way that this could be contained

was by a system of fear.

"I was now persuaded that I had got
into a world of bad spirits

"and they were going to kill me.

"Their complexions too differing
so much from ours,

"their long hair and the language they spoke

"which was very different from any
I had ever heard

"united to confirm me in this belief.

"I no longer doubted my fate.

"I asked if we were going to be eaten
by those white men with horrible looks,

"red faces and long hair".

— Olaudah Equiano

Captains called the voyage
from West Africa to the New World

the Middle Passage,

the middle leg of a triangular course
that began and ended in Europe.

From English ports ships sailed to Africa
to trade goods for slaves

then their human cargo was taken
into the Americas

and traded for raw materials

which were then carried back
to England and sold.

The crossing from Africa to the Americas
usually took 60 to 90 days

but some voyages took as long
as four or even six months.

Bad weather and sickness could turn
any trip into a nightmare.

The cramped quarters of ships
being packed in such a way

that a slave would be
between the legs of another slave

and having to lie in the feces.

The lack of air, the longer this trip takes,
the more suffocating.

"The surgeon, upon going
between decks, in the morning

"to examine the situation of the slaves

"frequently finds several dead

"and sometimes a dead and living negro
fastened by their irons together.

"When this is the case,
they are brought upon the deck.

"The living negro is disengaged
and the dead one thrown overboard".

— Alexander Falconbridge,
ship's surgeon.

There are no doubt people who went mad.

Inability to communicate decisions
having to be made

and this person suffering as yourself

does one help? does one simply try
to make it the best that one can alone,

not knowing "where am I being taken?"

"what is my fate?",

for weeks, months, depending
what the point of origin was.

"One day, two of my weary countrymen
who are chained together

"somehow made it through the nettings

"and they jumped into the sea.

"Immediately another quite dejected
fellow also followed their example

"and I believe many more would
have very soon done the same

"if they had not been prevented
by the ship's crew

"who were instantly alarmed".

— Olaudah Equiano

The idea, I think, was that the slave
cannot be allowed to die

by his will and intention.

He cannot be allowed to die voluntarily.

If he is going to die it must be
at the hands of his captors

so that in that case he does not spread
a dangerous example.

"Monday 11th December.

"By the favor of divine providence
made a timely discover today

"that the slaves were forming
a plot for insurrection

"surprised two of them attempting
to get off their ???

"and in their rooms found knives,
stones, etc.

"and a cold chisel.

"There appeared eight principally
concerned in protecting the mischief

"and four boys were supplying them
with the above instruments

"but the boys in ???

"and slightly in the thumbscrews
to urge them to a full confession".

— captain John Newton.

"We stood in arms,
firing on the revolted slaves

"of whom we killed some
and wounded many

"and many of the most mutinous
left overboard

"and drowned themselves
in the ocean with much resolution".

— James Barbot, English sailor, 1701.

"Often did I think many
of the inhabitants of the deep

"were happier that myself.

"Every circumstance I met with

"served only to render
my state more painful

"and heighten my apprehensions
and my opinion of the cruelty of whites".

— Olaudah Equiano.

The slavers, they knew in one level

that these were human beings

because there were obviously
clearly human beings.

At the same time, they were
objects of profit,

and those two concepts
could not be really reconciled

and they never were reconciled.

It was just, I think, that the sense
of humanity of these people

he was simply suppressed
for the sake of gold

and the shocking thing is
that human beings are able

indefinitely to suppress the urgings
of their common humanity

for the sake of making profits.

"Is not the slave trade entirely
a war with the heart of men?

"And surely that which has began
by breaking down the barriers of virtue

"involves in its continuance
destruction to every principle

"and buries all the symptom and ruin".

— Olaudah Equiano.

The Middle Passage ended for Equiano
on the island of Barbados,

one of the most profitable colonies
in the British Empire.

On Barbados, it was calculated
that it was cheaper to work slaves to death

and replaced them with new slaves

than treat them humanely.

Within three years of arrival,
one out of three slaves would die.

The boy Equiano judged too small
to cut sugar cane

was shipped north to the mainland
British America.

On the mainland, the plantation
system of Barbados

was admired and imitated,
particularly on the Carolina coast.

South Carolina started
as the colony of a colony.

Barbados had become overpopulated

with the younger sons
of English merchants

and with their slaves

and in both cases, they began to look
around, cast around for new places

and in the first decade
after South Carolina's initial settlement

there were just loads
of immigrants from Barbados

who brought with them
slaves from Barbados.

But more important than just
bring slaves, unlike Virginia,

they brought
a fully conceived idea of slavery.

On the shores of the Ashley River
stand Middleton place

home to one of the Carolina's
oldest families.

Middleton family members
were destined

to become part of the Carolina elite.

A governor, a congressman,

a signer of the Declaration of Independence.

The family had been among
the first settlers arriving from Barbados

in 1678, with a land grant in Goose Creek
just 14 miles north of Charleston,

Carolina's slave trading center.

By 1706, a second generation
of Middletons

had almost tripled the size
of the family's land holdings

to 5000 acres of Carolina wilderness.

At age 25, young Arthur Middleton
was master of the Oaks plantation.

"Dear Sara, Mr. Arthur Middleton
is married to my sister

"and was a schoolfellow with me
when I was at Carolina.

"He is a sensible man and one
of the richest in the country

"with upwards of 100 negroes".

— Thomas Amery.

Racial slavery turns out to be
extraordinarily profitable

for the people who have seized control.

The planter can complain in his diary
that it has been a bad year

or the crop is weak
or the rainy season lasted too long

but year in and year out
tremendous profits are being made.

The immigrants from Barbados
had searched for a cash crop

that would make them rich.

Families like the Middletons found it.

It was rice.

The most prized Africans in Carolina

were from Angola, Senegambia
and the Windward Coast,

people who brought the rice growing skills
the Europeans did not have.

"Rice is the most unhealthiest work
in which the slaves were employed

"and they sank under it
in great numbers.

"The causes of this dreadful mortality

"are the constant moisture
and heat of the atmosphere

"together with the alternate
flooding and drying of the fields

"and which the negroes
are perpetually at work

"often ankle deep in mud

"with their bare heads exposed
to the fierce rays of the Sun".

— Captain Basil Hall.

Many masters can't be persuaded
that Negroes and Indians

are otherwise than beasts

and use them like such.

"I daily perceive that many things
are done here

"out of a worldly principle,
little for God sake".

— Francis Le Jau, Anglican minister.

In 1706, the Middletons
donated four acres of land

for a church in Goose Creek.

Francis Le Jau, the first full-time
Anglican minister

was not opposed to slavery

but he preached that all men
regardless of color, had immortal souls.

He earned a reputation
for spending time with the Negroes,

baptizing and teaching them
to read the Bible.

He spoke out often against
the brutality of Carolina slaveholders

who were seeking to control
the growing population of Africans.

"I have had of late an opportunity
to oppose with all my might

"a very unhuman law in relation
to runaway Negroes.

"Such a Negro must be mutilated
by amputation of testicles if it be a man,

"and an ear, if a woman.

"I've openly declared against
such a punishment

"grounded upon the law of God".

— Francis Le Jau.

The Anglican missionaries probably
described the black community

better than anyone at the time
in early Carolina.

They described it as a nation
within a nation.

The Africans lived separated
from the rest of society.

Being freshly from Africa,
their frame of reference was African.

They were very much familiar
with this kind of subtropical environment

that they found themselves in
in Carolina.

There's still communities of people
who live, love, raise children and work

and they feel that, as people, as humans,

they have a right to come and go,

they have a right to visit
their wives and their husbands

on other plantations.

It was, as one traveler said,
a Negro country.

"Their numbers increase every day
as well by birth as importation.

"and in case they should arise
a man of desperate courage,

"exasperated by a desperate fortune

"he might kindle a servile war.

"Such a man might be
dreadfully mischievous

"before any opposition
could be formed against him

"and tinge our rivers,
as wide as they are, with blood".

— William Bird, Virginia planter.

In 1710, just 15 years after
rice took hold in Carolina

Africans began to outnumber
Europeans in the colony.

As the number of Africans rose
so too did white fear and retaliation.

"Mister D told me once he cut off
a Negro man's leg for running away.

"I asked him if the man had died
in the operation

"and how he, as a Christian, could answer
for the horrid act before God.

"And he told me, answering was a thing
of another world,

"what he thought and did as policy.

"He then said his scheme
had the desired effect.

"It cured that man and some others
of running away".

— Olaudah Equiano.

If you were a white authority
you're constantly trying

to figure how tightly you want
to impose the lid

with respect to people running away,

how fierce should the punishments be.

Should it be a whipping,

should it be the loss of a finger
or a hand or a foot?

Should it be wearing shackles perpetually?

The entire system of control
is based on physical punishment

often making examples out of people

so that others will be intimidated.

The colonial legislature passed laws
designed to more tightly control

the growing black majority.

Planter records reveal punishments
inflicted for infractions large and small.

"8 February 1709,

"I rose at 5 o'clock this morning
and read a chapter in Hebrew

"and 200 verses in Homer's Odyssey.

"I hate milk for breakfast.

"I said my prayers.

"Jenny and Eugene were whipped.

"17 April, Annika was whipped yesterday
for stealing the rum

"and filling the bottle up with water.

"I said my prayers and I danced, I danced.

"Eugene was whipped again
for pissing in bed

"and Jenny for concealing it.

"I took a walk about the plantation.

"Eugene was whipped for running away
and had the bit put on him.

"I said my prayers, I had good health,
good thoughts and good humor,

"thanks be to God Almighty".

— William Bird, Virginia planter.

When you enslave a person,
in some ways you became a slave yourself

because masters and slaves
are natural enemies

and that is what the Europeans
had to deal with.

They had to deal with a population
living amongst them,

sometimes the majority
of the population, in hostility.

They lived amongst enemies

and, as one Carolina planter said,

nowhere on Earth is mankind
so plagued by enemies

living within them as we are
in our own homes.

"The Spanish are receiving and harboring
all our runaway Negroes.

"They have found out a new way
of sending our own slaves against us

"to rob and plunder us.

"We are not only at a vast expense
in guarding our southern frontiers

"but the inhabitants
are continually alarmed.

"Out of Middleton acting governor is 1728".

On the South Carolina frontier
word spread of Africans and Indians

coming out from Spanish Florida
to attack planters

and of Spanish authorities offering
runaways freedom on Florida soil.

In Goose Creek, an Anglican minister
complained of secret poisonings

and bloody insurrections
by certain Christians slaves.

South Carolina is a pot ready to boil over.

Imagine coming into a setup
that seems almost unbearable

and finding that people,
many of them,

have somehow rationalized it
or are enduring it

now that is the best they can do.

But you, as a newcomer, might feel,

"I am not going to put up with this,
better to die, trying to change this"

and there must have been
hundreds of people like that

in South Carolina, in the 1730s.

By the 1730s, close to 2000 Africans

were arriving at a port
of Charleston, each year.

From 1735 to 1739,
out of the 11 000 slaves landed,

more than 8000 were listed as Angolans.

What develops is a sense among Europeans
that slaves from certain areas

have particular characteristics.

Slaves from the Angola area
are reputed among the English

to be particularly difficult,
to be rebellious.

In St. Paul's parish, there were
close to a thousand new people

who just a few years before

had been taken from
the Angola region of Africa.

One of them, we only know his name,
a man named Jimmy,

apparently had come recently from Angola.

He may not even have spoken English

but he may have had strong contacts
with other Angolans.

He had a try to build alliances
not only with other Angolans,

other new arrivals,
but with other Africans,

African-Americans, people from a community
he was not that familiar with

and apparently, he succeeded.

During the early morning
hours of September, 9th 1739,

almost as soon as word is received
in South Carolina,

that England and Spain are at war,

some 20 Angolan slaves,
led by the man named Jimmy,

began marching towards Saint Augustine
and the promise of freedom.

Just 30 miles from the Middletons'
Oalk Plantation, at the Stono Bridge,

they seized a general store
where there were arms and powder.

They killed the storekeepers
and left their heads on the doorstep.

What better moment to start
an uprising and try to strike out

for St. Augustine and find freedom in Florida

in the hope that the Spanish authorities
are willing to grant freedom

to English-speaking slaves

who escaped from Carolina's into Florida.

On the march south, the Africans
did not kill every white they encountered.

They spared Mr. Wallace, an innkeeper
they knew to be kind to his slaves

but before the day ended
they had killed more than 20 people.

As other slaves joined them,
they became an army of almost a hundred,

camped at the Edisto River, waiting
for others to gather under their flag.

The entire force of English North America
was going to come down

because this was an issue
not mainly for those in South Carolina

immediately surrounding this area.

This was an issue for every
European colonists

everywhere in the colonies
to quash this

and to provide some exemplary punishment.

Around noon the nearest
white settlers were alerted.

By four in the afternoon,
they caught up with the Negroes

along the Edisto River
and fired upon.

Eyewitnesses recorded
that the rebels fought boldly

but at least 14 were killed or wounded
in the first attack.

Others were surrounded, questioned
and then shot.

The armed colonists then turned
toward Charleston

and on mile post along the way
they left the heads of the executed men.

Just the way the war transforms people

this terrible transformation
into race slavery

had changed people
by the middle of the 18th century.

So, the violence you see at Stono
is a violence that had become

pervasive in the culture
by the middle of the 18th century.

This had become a way of life
in the English colonies.

Stono was sort of the beginning
of the concept

that the black population
had to be utterly controlled

and the legislation that came out
of Stono, the Negro Act,

took away whatever liberties
the Africans had:

freedom of movement,

freedom of assembly,

to earn money,

to learn to read,

all were outlawed.

South Carolina imposed duties
on all slave importations

and encouraged European immigration

in order to change the ratio
of whites to blacks.

The Negro Act became
the model for slave laws

throughout the mainland
of British America.

"Why do you use
those instruments of torture?

"Are they not fit to be applied
by one rational being to another?

"And are you not struck with shame
and mortification

"to see the particles of your nature
reduced so low?

"But above all, are there no dangers
attending this mode of treatment?

"Are you not ??? and dread
of an insurrection?"

— Olaudah Equiano.

News of the rebellion traveled
quickly to New York,

now the third largest city
in British America.

Most of Manhattan island
was unbroken wilderness

crossed by streams emptying
into both the Hudson and East rivers.

By 1740, except for Charleston,
South Carolina,

no city in colonial America
had so high density of slave population.

as New York.

Crowded into the southern tip
of the island lived 11 000 people

of which more than 2000 were black.

There was really an illusion of intimacy

between enslaved blacks
and their white slave owners

who lived under the same roof.

These people could not trust
one another.

In fact, the slave owners considered
enslaved blacks domestic enemies.

"New York, November 18th 1731.

"Be it ordained by the authority of this city
that all Negro, Mullato or Indian slaves

"that shall die within this city
be buried by daylight.

"And for the prevention of great numbers
of slaves assembling

"and meeting together at their funerals

"under pretext whereof they have great
opportunities of plotting

"and confederating together to do mischief

"be it further ordained
that not above twelve slaves

"shall assemble or meet together
at the funeral".

— Minutes of the Common Council
of New York

There were probably a lot of other issues
going on in New York city at that time

that made whites suspicious of blacks.

There was among the lower classes
of blacks and whites

a lot of racial amalgamation.

There was a lot of activity
in the grog shops

between blacks and whites,
blacks frequenting taverns.

New York city was a cosmopolitan place

with people from various
ethnic groups converging,

lots of seamen,

and blacks were very much a part of that.

In taverns, black men illegally gathered,

drank and mingled
with white New York residents.

Many enslaved men in New York
were hired out by their masters.

They had relative freedom of movement
and control over their own time.

The Afro-American adult male
is seen as the most troublesome,

the most intractable,
the most rebellious.

Those are the persons
who are growing in the population.

By law, they are not supposed
to be out after sunset,

by law they are not supposed
to have any currency of their own,

by law they are not supposed
to go and gather

in numbers of three or greater,

by law they are not supposed
to be out drinking.

Yet every night they are out
doing all of these things.

They have developed in colonial
New York city, a lively street life

amongst black men.

And enslaved and free,

these black men organized
into clubs or gangs

and they were a constant presence
on the streets.

They even gathered at night,
at the docks or in taverns,

and they present

— according to the English authorities
and anxious white residents —

a public threat.

On March 18th 1741,
a fire broke out at Fort George,

the governor's official residence.

Whipped by violent winds, it burned

until a rain shower cooled the blaze,

keeping it from torching the entire city.

A week later, another fire broke out,

and then, in the next three weeks,
fires raged.

Then, as this rash occurs,

a sense that there is some
evil hand behind this develops.

And then people begin
to see a black hand.

They begin to worry that slaves
are behind this,

that this is some act of vengeance,

that this is some prelude to rebellion.

In 1741, England was now
at war with Spain

and many of the colonial authorities
in New York city

feared that the enslaved blacks
would have been influenced

by a promise from Spain of freedom.

It was the English authorities
who claimed that they had discovered

a combination between enslaved blacks
and the lower orders of white town dwellers

transients and vagabonds

to destroy the town,
to burn it to the ground

and to set up a black or negro regime

that would all allegiance to Spain.

Just 30 years earlier in New York,

fire had been instrumental
in the Negro plot of 1712,

where nine whites were killed
and five were seriously wounded.

Now the city's officials did not waste
any time finding an explanation

for the mysterious events.

A general dragnet goes out

and just about every African-American
male over 16 years of age

is taken up and put in jail
crowded under the City Hall.

The court used the testimony
of Mary Burton,

a 16-year old indentured servant,

to accuse the alleged conspirators.

Burton worked at a tavern
in a brothel in the city,

a business that regularly
served black customers.

Promised her freedom from servitude,
Mary Burton started implicating

a constant stream of men and women,

some white, but most young black men.

For close to four months
black men were dragged into court

off New York streets.

New Yorkers are so incensed over
what they conceive of as a conspiracy

that they create this wave of paranoia

that leads to incredible murders
and incredible punishments.

It speaks to the whole entrenchment
of slavery, even in the north,

and also it speaks
to racial attitudes as well

that they are very much afraid
of racial egalitarianism

and people in the lower echelons
of their society coming together

to form any kind of bond.

In May, New Yorkers witnessed
the public execution

of Ceaser and Prince,

two black men accused of participating
in a robbery connected to the fires.

Caesar's corpse was then hung in chains
until it decomposed.

"From the spring of 1741
through the following winter

"and into the spring of 1742,

"some 160 slaves and
at least a dozen whites

"were accused of conspiracy
against the city of New York.

"31 Africans were put to death,
13 of them burned at the stake

"and four whites were hung".

"23 June, 1741,

"To Dr. Cadwallader Colden
Governor's Council Province of New York.

"Sir, the horrible executions
among you puts me in mind

"of our New England witchcraft
in the year of 1692.

"I am hungry of the opinion
that such confessions

"are not worth a straw

"for many times they are obtained
by foul means, by force or torment

"or in hopes of a longer time to live
or to die an easier death.

"I entreat you not to go on
making bonfires of the Negroes

"and loading yourselves
with greater guilt than theirs.

"For we have too much reason
to fear that the divine vengeance

"does and will pursue us
for our ill treatment

"to the bodies and the souls
of our poor slaves".

— anonymous letter from Massachusetts.

The encroachment of slavery
in American society

that began in Virginia

culminated in 1750 with the decision
to legalize slavery in Georgia,

the last free colony.

It had been a little over 100 years

since Anthony Johnson
first arrived in Virginia.

Now slavery existed everywhere
in the 13 colonies.

But the argument over who would be free
and who would be equal

had just begun.

For generations to come

slavery would continue
to trouble the soul of America.

"When you make men slaves
you deprive them of half their virtue

"you set them in your own conduct
and example of fraud and cruelty

"and compel them to live with you
in a state of war".

— Olaudah Equiano, enslaved African.