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Europeans, Africans, and American Indians practiced slavery long
before the first purchase of a captive African by a white
land-owner in the American colonies; that, however, is the image of
slavery most prevalent in the minds of Americans today. This Very
Short Introduction begins with the Portuguese capture of Africans
in the 1400s and traces the development of American slavery until
its abolition following the Civil War. Historian Heather Andrea
Williams draws upon the rich recent scholarship of numerous
highly-regarded academics as well as an analysis of primary
documents to explore the history of slavery and its effects on the
American colonies and later the United States of America. Williams
examines legislation that differentiated American Indians and
Africans from Europeans as the ideology of white supremacy
flourished and became an ingrained feature of the society. These
laws reflected the contradiction of America's moral and
philosophical ideology that valorized freedom on one hand and
justified the enslavement of a population deemed inferior on
another. She explores the tense and often violent relationships
between the enslaved and the enslavers, and between abolitionists
and pro-slavery advocates as those who benefited from the
institution fought to maintain and exert their power. Williams is
attentive to the daily labors that enslaved people performed,
reminding readers that slavery was a system of forced labor with
economic benefits that produced wealth for a new nation, all the
while leaving an indelible mark on its history.
In this previously untold story of African American self-education,
Heather Andrea Williams moves across time to examine African
Americans' relationship to literacy during slavery, during the
Civil War, and in the first decades of freedom. Some slaves devised
creative and subversive means to acquire literacy, and when slavery
ended, they became the first teachers of other freedpeople.
Williams argues that by teaching, building schools, supporting
teachers, resisting violence, and claiming education as a civil
right, African Americans transformed the face of education in the
South to the great benefit of both black and white southerners.
After the Civil War, African Americans placed poignant
""information wanted"" advertisements in newspapers, searching for
missing family members. Inspired by the power of these ads, Heather
Andrea Williams uses slave narratives, letters, interviews, public
records, and diaries to guide readers back to devastating moments
of family separation during slavery when people were sold away from
parents, siblings, spouses, and children. Williams explores the
heartbreaking stories of separation and the long, usually
unsuccessful journeys toward reunification. Examining the interior
lives of the enslaved and freedpeople as they tried to come to
terms with great loss, Williams grounds their grief, fear, anger,
longing, frustration, and hope in the history of American slavery
and the domestic slave trade. Williams follows those who were
separated, chronicles their searches, and documents the rare
experience of reunion. She also explores the sympathy,
indifference, hostility, or empathy expressed by whites about
sundered black families. Williams shows how searches for family
members in the post-Civil War era continue to reverberate in
African American culture in the ongoing search for family history
and connection across generations.
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