Africans in the Americas: The Terrible Transformation

Consider these questions before you watch the program:

  1. Generate a list of various groups of people who inhabited the American colonies in 1750.
  1. How might, race, class, gender, national origin, or other factors influence an individuals or groups legal and economic status? Take notes as you watch the program:

Answer these questions as you watch the program:

Segment 1:

  1. What factors determined labor status during the early 1600s?
  2. What is the cash crop of the Virginia colony? What did businessmen need to maximize their profit?
  3. What characterized the unfree labor force, initially, in early viriginia?
  4. What Characterized Viriginia’s “Headright” system?

Segment 2:

  1. What is the status of Anthony Johnson, what opportunities were available to he and his wife in Virginia during the 1600s? Was this normal for that period or was he in a unique position?

Segment 3:

  1. What begins to change for African Americans by the 1640s? What begins to determine the status un-free labor, or the definition of those who may be enslaved, or not free?
  2. What colonies begin to pass laws that recognize slavery as a legal institution?
  3. What laws are passed that makes enslavement a hereditary position?

Segment 4:

  1. What changes take place that make racial slavery preferable to the system of indentured servitude?
  2. How are white European indentured servants differentiated from Black African indentured servants?
  3. What laws are passed that construct a racial slave system?

Segment 5:

  1. What changes lead to England to become the largest trafficker of slaves in the Western world?
  2. What are some of the statistics for the rise in African enslavement after 1698?

Segment 6:

  1. What is the “Middle Passage”?

Segment 7:

  1. What leads to further institutionalization of racial slavery and control over the black population?
  2. What is the Stono Rebellion of 1739? What was the Negro Act?

Segment 8:

  1. What is the significance of the 1740 New York City fire?
  2. What year marks all 13 colonies as slave holding societies?

Consider these programs after you watch the program:

  1. Who benefited from the establishment of British colonies in the Americas? What kinds of hardships did the establishment of the colonies create for Europeans, for Africans, and for Native Americans? What opportunities did it create?
  1. What made the enslavement of Africans in the 17th century different from previous forms of slavery? Discuss ways in which Africans resisted enslavement. Give examples from the program of Africans making alliances with other groups.
  1. Create a Venn Diagram (interlocking circles) that compares indentured servitude to slavery in the 18th-Century British American colonies. Who became servants? Who became slaves? How were the lives of servants and slaves alike? How were they different? What rights did servants have that slaves did not?
  1. How did race-based slavery develop? What led to the shift from bond labor to slave labor in the British American colonies. Trace the development of laws that enforced the slave status of Africans and their descendants. How did slavery develop as a social, economic and legal institution? What racial attitudes allowed acceptance of these laws? Could slavery have developed without them?