African American
by Jeffrey J. Crow and Raymond
In 1890 five generations of Mountain blacks posed for this photograph. Think of the
changes they saw during their lifetimes and how they tried to preserve, protect, maintain,
and re-create their heritage and traditions. As you read this issue of THJH, think about
the challenges that African Americans have faced since then and how they also have strived
to preserve, protect, maintain, and re-create their heritage and traditions.
process of emancipation during the Civil War
revealed African Americans’ committed sense
of identity, self-direction, and independence.
As soldiers in the fight for freedom, they
expected to receive equal treatment and equal
pay. And as other free citizens, they wanted
to support their families with honest labor.
The pictorial article by Alice Eley Jones
demonstrates how enslaved Africans and
later African Americans continued to use
the knowledge they inherited from their
ancestors. They used ideas and skills learned
in Africa to build
homes, cultivate
crops, cook food, and
make tools and
utensils.
Essays by Charles
W. Wadelington,
Beverly W. Jones,
and David S. Ceeelski
demonstrate the
continuity that
persisted in educa¬
tion, racial uplift, and
solidarity from one
generation of African Perhaps one of the biggest
Americans to the challenges to face African
,
я
Americans since emancipa-
next. Wadelington,
tion has been the Jightpor
ЮГ
example, points equal opportunities, in
OUt that Charlotte particular for education.
A
Chronology
of Events
in African
American
Life
1500s
The first Africans
accompany explorers
to the New World. In
what would become North
Carolina, Lucas Vasques
dc Ayllon (1526) and Sir
Francis Drake (1586) bring
Africans with them.
1619
A Dutch ship drops
anchor at Jamestown in
the Virginia colony. Its
cargo includes the colony’s
first African slaves.
1670
The colony of Virginia
passes a law stating that
newly imported Africans
are heathens that do not
believe in Christ and
“should, in good Christian
conscience, be held as slaves
for the duration of their
lives." Southern ministers
commonly use this argu¬
ment to defend slavery.
Look at the “Chronology of Events in
African American Life” that appears
in the margins throughout this issue.
One of the first entries states that Africans
visited the shores of North Carolina as early
as the 1500s when they accompanied
European explorers to the New World.
That means that African Americans, Native
Americans, and European Americans have
worked or lived together in separate and
shared communities for more than four
hundred years.
As you read the articles in this issue,
think about how community has shaped
the African American experience in North
Carolina. Think about how African
Americans have constantly tried to
preserve, protect, maintain, and re-create
their community while facing the challenges
of slavery, segregation, and the Civil Rights
movement.
The articles by Dorothy Spruill Redford
and John Inscoe discuss the slave community
in North
Carolina
and how
enslaved
Africans
fought to
maintain
family ties
and the
elements
of African
culture
and beliefs
that their
parents
and grand¬
parents
had held.
These
articles
also dis¬
cuss how African Americans constantly
adjusted and adapted to new conditions.
John David Smith’s essay on emancipation
shows how strongly both slaves and free
blacks fought to protect their families. The
FIFE POi'XDS REWARD.
RUN-AWAY from the fub-
Ccnbcr, a negro fellow nam¬
ed DANIEL, thirty-three years
of age, a low well let fellow, has
a very Hat nofe, down look, black
complexion, and but few words in
common, he can .read fome in
print, and is a black-finith, filvcr-
imith and a cooper ; carried away
with him iilver-fivnlhs tools, ami
dilferent fuits of homefpun cloths,
one pair of buck-fkm breeches,
and one Dutch blanket. Any per-
lon that will deliver him to me, or
fecurc laid negro lo that I may
get him again, (hall receive the
above reward from
ABRAHAM TAYLOR.
B.-riir Gjunty, iVljrcb 24, 1791.
The story of African American life that we
discuss in this issue begins with slavery, the
first major obstacle to face blacks in the
United States.
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