The 21st Century Black History: From the Atlantic Slave Trade in America to Its Impact on African Americans Today

By Lee Arnold Green Sr.

Black History in the 21st Century: From the Atlantic Slave Trade in America to Its Impact on African Americans Today is mainly about the injustices suffered by African Americans in America, especially the impact of the Atlantic slave trade in America on the negro race today, to include people of color. The impact of the Atlantic slave trade in the twenty-first century is high-tech lynching in America, that is, without the noose around the neck of the African American. High-tech lynching is defined in this book as the following: There are two phases of high-tech lynching. The first phase is characterized by violence, death, and/or destruction by white racists, race haters, or white supremacists, practicing bad spirit principal part racist hatred of racism against African Americans on the streets, to include people of color. The practice of racism is the use of racial or racist epithets characterized by the sentiment of racial segregation, white cultural and political domination that characterizes discriminatory language and/or physical practice of racism that involves violence, death, and/or destruction against black Americans in America. These are racist incidents on the streets. That is the first phase of high-tech lynching in the twenty-first century in America.

And then an African American takes his or her racist case to court for courtroom proceedings. This is the second phase of high-tech lynching in America in the twenty-first century, wherein the courtroom, the DA, or district attorney, become hairsplitters of the letter of the law and nitpick at the spirit of the law as to the alleged violation or crime to justify the action or bad behavior of racist white policemen or white supremacists, characterized by their bad spirit principal part racist hatred of racism. Therefore, high-tech lynching involves the judges of the courts in America that go along with their district attorney's travesty of justice or mockery of the justice system. To include the legislators who make the laws in America and oftentimes their designated juries based on their homogeneity of bad spirit principal part racist hatred. Therefore, high-tech lynching is the effect of America's Atlantic slave trade on African Americans today in this the twenty-first century, post-Jim Crow as a system of predatory laws and tyranny of racism practiced against African Americans.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Newman Springs Publishing, Inc.
• Release date: May 23, 2022
• ISBN: 9781636924601

Book preview

Author’s Educational Background

I attended public school in Leland, Mississippi. I attended Leland High School, where I played high school football as a defensive tackle my senior year, though I lagged behind two years. One year I was behind because I started school late, but the other year I was behind because I actually failed to keep pace with the others. Subsequent to moving up to the tenth grade, I left high school and went to Job Corps. I attended Great Onyx Job Corps Center, Mammoth Cave, Kentucky. While in Job Corps, I continued my general educational studies for a general equivalency diploma (GED). Fortunately, I earned a brick mason certification in June of 1977 and then joined the US Marine Corps.

In July 18, 1977, I reported to the Marine Corps boot camp at Parris Island, South Carolina. Following boot camp, I reported to Marine Corps Base Camp Lejeune, North Carolina. There I continued to pursue my general equivalency diploma. I attended a continuing educational program jointly sponsored by the United States Marine Corps and Coastal Carolina Community College Jacksonville, North Carolina, on behalf of the Marines.

As a United States Marine, I stayed in pursuit of my dream of having a formal education. So I maintained my conduct in a military manner, thereby obeying all superiors and officers and performing my duties to the best of my ability. I succeeded in 1980 to finish my general education and began my formal education at East Carolina University in a continuing education program; my major was psychology (1980–82). I served in the Marine Corps from July 18, 1977, to June 17, 1982, and I got out of the Marine Corps and then moved to Greenville, North Carolina, in order to attend East Carolina University on campus, still in pursuit of my bachelor’s degree in psychology.

I attended Pitt Community College in a human services program (1982–84), and I attended East Carolina University at the same time. East Carolina University was one of the colleges that participated in the seat belt research for the current seat belt law in America today. I was one of the individuals who gathered data to make the seat belt law possible. To this day in 2020, in this the twenty-first century, I’m proud to say that I was a researcher or a research participant that made it all possible in the mid-1980s. Today, we can say Wearing your seat belt saves lives.

Subsequent to having finished two years of my college education at Greenville, North Carolina—two at Pitt Community College and my freshman and sophomore years at East Carolina University simultaneously—I was forced to abandon college due to hardships in the family. I had been married since November 1, 1980, and had two little boys; as much as I hated to leave school, I had to say goodbye. Still and all, I said I’d be back. It was not until in the fall of 2004 that I went back to school to finish my college education in Greenville, Mississippi. I resumed my studies at Mississippi Delta Community College, Moorhead, Mississippi: general studies undergraduate courses (2006). I attended Pitt Community online and finished one last course to earn my associate’s degree in applied science of human services technology in Greenville, North Carolina, in 2006. I earned my associate’s degree in human services and thereby became a human service technician. I attended Dealt State University, Cleveland, Mississippi (2005–2006) and studied psychology. It was there I finished my degree in psychology, which had begun at East Carolina University, and thereby I earned my Bachelor of Arts degree in psychology and minored in sociology. As of now, I have authored five books.

Contents

Preface 1

Acknowledgments 3

The First African in America and Atlantic Slave Trade Era 5

The Underground Railroad during American Slavery 16

The Antebellum South: The House Nigger, Self-preservation and Uncle Tom 27

The Development of the Phrase People of Color 43

Thomas Jefferson: Founding Father, President, Sexual Abuser and Slave Master 57

Racism: A Bad Spirit Principal Part Racist Grudge 65

How Novel Knowledge or Intuition was achieved by Thomas Jefferson and John Newton 81

Typical Sexual Abuse of Enslaved African Women during American Slavery 90

The American Civil War, and Why 100

President Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation for January 1, 1863 116

The Death of the Great Emancipator 128

White Supremacy, Reconstruction Debates, and Jim Crow Laws 142

Racism: Separate but Equal Doctrine in America’s Constitution 153

Black Lives Matter Movement Struggle for Equal Justice 170

Why America Is Not a Racist Country 181

The Attempt to Bring Back Psychological Slavery in America 193

African American Sharecroppers after America’s Reconstruction Period 207

The Great Migration and White Flight in America 221

Jim Crow in the Flesh and System of Laws of Tyranny and Racism 245

The Most Racist Politicians Ever in America to the Twenty-First Century 263

Homegrown Terrors in America 274

Bigots, White Supremacists, Racists: Why the Hate in America? 284

Effects of the Union Victory over the Confederacy on Racist Americans 297

Homegrown Hatred against the US Constitution and Democracy 306

Courtroom Justice against Racism and Bigotry in America 316

References 333

Preface

This book was written to give the public a synopsis of black history in America, from the beginning of the Atlantic slave trade to this present day, to give rise to the understanding and importance of racism in the world and especially America. It is to shine light on family trees, family roots, and the importance of family reunions, as well as to show the difference between epigenetics and genetic inheritance. Every man, woman, and child needs a fair chance of knowing from whence he or she came as well as whether or not anyone inherits racism. And whether racism is genetic or an epigenetic effect, by which you are required to read The Book of Affinitive Life to the Natural Side of Life and The Book of Life to the Spirit Side of Life for understanding. Whosoever considers tracing his or her family roots, looking into the importance of surnames or last names in comparison to his or her male paternal bloodline Y-DNA or female maternal bloodline mtDNA, is required to read The Family Reunion Book as your source and guide. The Family Reunion Book is a good source in tracing your family roots by last name as well as DNA.

This book will give you a synopsis of black history in America in relation to racism. It is to give people an understanding, knowledge, and wisdom about his or her family tree and family roots as an American and why racism is a covert systemic source in the American society. In the end, you will know how racism is celebrated, represented, and honored in the American society. Since people think differently and have little to no knowledge about epigenetics, this book will arouse your interest about the family trees of Americans and racist family roots against people of color. One aspect of this book is to draw your attention to the significance of DNA, genes, genetics, and especially epigenetics, which is very important in relation to family trees and ancestral bloodlines, lineage, pedigree, or genealogy. And in the case of this book, it looks closely at your American roots and why some white people discriminate against people of color and especially black people.

After I started meticulously investigating family roots, it led me to DNA, genetics, and especially epigenetics in relation to black Americans’ family roots. And since family roots produce many individual families of a family tree, I learned that DNA needs to be explained to understand why family roots are so important. Now all about DNA in relation to family roots is explained in the book I’ve written called The Family Reunion Book. After having embraced the need for the general public, and especially black America, to understand DNA in relation to black roots in America as its heritage, you must understand the epigenetic gene process that leads to affinitive life. I wrote it in The Book of Affinitive Life and The Book of Life.

This book gives the underlying foundation or basic framework of information as to the hidden racism in America, as it is systemic racism of epigenetic basis rather than genetic. The intent of this book is to give people an epigenetic viewpoint of racism in America and the enlightenment on the importance of DNA in conjunction with racism against people of color in America. This book has been conscientiously investigated and then put together based on genetic, epigenetic, scientific, and personal knowledge, wisdom, experience, and understanding to understand the basics of racism in America against people of color and particularly African Americans. In the end, this book would have shown how racism is a personal sentiment by virtue of epigenetics rather than an inheritance.

Acknowledgments

It takes a lot of hard work to put together a good book such as this one. Oftentimes it includes faithful, hardworking people to put together a really good book that embraces science such as DNA. It is even more difficult when only one person takes on the task, as it is required to gather facts regarding racism in America. Many rewrites were involved in this book, as it is for any book, except this type of book requires even more meticulous attention in order to gather the facts and any person can’t just write such a book. It incorporates scientific information about DNA and genes as well as genetics and epigenetics. Whether authored by a scientist or not, some writings require scientific proof, such as the technical part of this book—DNA, genetics, and epigenetics. So I give special thanks to the writers of the books I referred to, which are cited in the references section of this book, especially those whose works are of epigenetics; their hard work has fixed it for others to be able to move forward with their work concerning DNA.

Every scientist is not as open-minded and accommodating by allowing automatic permission to use their findings and just give them credit. So credit goes to all the scientific sources listed in the back of this book. These add to the importance of this book and show that we need each other, just as this book promotes the need to understand racism in America against people of color and especially black America. However, racism is genetically based, but rather by means of epigenetics. There are individuals and groups of scientific studies listed in this book whereby science has helped to tell the story and make it wholly understandable that racism in America is epigenetically based and thereby genetically based. In the form of scientific studies, we gain knowledge in a way we cannot in any other way. These sources listed in the back of this book helped to tell the story of the foundation of systemic racism in America against people of color and particularly black Americans. Without the understanding of epigenetics according to The Book of Affinitive Life, the story could not be told.

This book is a synopsis about the Atlantic slave trade in America, which gives it its subtitle, From the Atlantic Slave Trade in America to Its Impact on African Americans Today. This book is an effort on my part to make the world a better place for us all, especially Americans—regardless of race, color of skin, sex, or religion. It is possible for any society or culture to successfully move forward practicing systemic racism because it is covert, which is still overt through its practice. Racism is boldly seen by everyone.

We are the world, and we can make a better day if everyone puts forth a little effort to shake a hand and make a friend in the world. While this book is centered on the foundation of racism in America, it is my desire and aim, in relation to epigenetics, to help promote its importance by giving rise to its unpopularity; the popularity of epigenetics must rise to normality. A lot of common sense is derived from epigenetics, especially in terms of signals from the environment in relation to mutated genes, thereby leading to abnormal genes and causing defective traits, diseases, disorders, and conditions epigenetic-based.

Chapter 1

The First African in America and Atlantic Slave Trade Era

The Atlantic Slave Trade Era, Beginning in colonial America and extended unto the present-Day United States of America

History leads us to know that the first African people taken to the Americas were taken in small groups, and not directly from Africa but rather by way of Spain and Portugal and the Atlantic Sea Islands. In the sixteenth century, the Portuguese were the first to engage in the Atlantic slave trade. It was not until 1526 that they completed their first transatlantic slave voyage to Brazil. The development of Brazil’s sugar plantations created a growing demand for African slaves. And then other settlers of European origin established their own colonies in the Caribbean, and North America followed in pursuit of the pattern of the Brazilians. Brazil is the largest country in both South America and Latin America. They, too, became slaveholders, slave masters, and/or slave owners. This created a profitable market for plantations to produce a commodity for international markets. In the beginning, European planters used a combination of free labor, enslaved labor, and indenture. But they soon realized, for many of their crops, such as tobacco, sugar, rice, cotton, etc., that African slave labor was more profitable since it was easy to get and cheap. Subsequently, an epic proportion of African people were enslaved and then shipped across the Atlantic Sea as profitable commodities for Westerners’ usage (Anstey 1975).

The United States, whose enslaved African people have come to be known as African Americans, established a legal institution of human chattel enslavement in the United States of America from when it was found in 1776 until the 13th amendment was passed in 1865. In the Americas, slavery was established throughout European colonization. From initial colonial days, slavery was a routine practice in Britain’s colonies, and this also included the thirteen colonies that formed the United States. During that time under the law, slaves were treated as property and could be bought, sold, or even given away. American slavery lasted about half of the United States up until 1865. Slavery was America’s largest employer when cotton was king as an economic system until 1865. Enslaved African people were brought over here across the Atlantic mainly to work on plantations or in fields—sugarcane fields, cotton fields, tobacco fields, rice fields, coffee fields, cocoa fields—and to work in gold and silver mines and to do other menial work. Slavery was replaced by sharecropping and convict leasing (Anstey 1975).

From the early 14th century until the inclusion of the colonies become the United States of America, the colonial history covered the European colonization, which end as the historical United States. England, France, Castile, and the Dutch Republic produced major colonization programs in North America in the late 16th century. The death rate was very high among the ones first arrived; some initial attempts disappeared such as the English lost Colony of Roanoke. However, European settlers came from different social and religious groups, including adventurers, indentured servants, farmers, tradesmen, and some came from the aristocracy. These settles included the Dutch of New Netherland, the Swedes and Finns of New Sweden, the Province of Pennsylvania, the English settlers of Jamestown, Virginia the English Puritans of New England, the Protest and Nonconformists of the province of Maryland, and the English Romans Catholics, the poor of the Province of George said to be the worthy poor. This included the Germans who settled the mid-Atlantic colonies, and ulster Scots of the Appalachian Mountains (Wiecek 1977).

The United States became a part of all these groups when it gained its independence in 1776. Also incorporated were parts New France and Russian America and New Spain were also included into the United States at different times. From these different regions diverse colonists built colonies of distinguished social, economic, religious and political lifestyles. As time passed east of the Mississippi River were taken over by non-British colonies, and by that means most of the inhabitants were assimilated, and by that means taken in, by which it became to be fully understood as their culture as it was absorbed into their system. The British expelled the France Acadians in Nova Scotia, and then many relocated to Louisiana. Fortunately, as strange as it may appear no wars occurred in the thirteen colonies. On the contrary, they were steadfast.

In Virginia in 1676 and in New York in 1689–91 the two principal armed rebellions were short-lived as failures. Not firmly standing, some of the colonies legalized slavery and by which developed systems of legalized bondage of human beings, largely centered on the Atlantic Slave Trade. At the time there were Wars between the French and Indians whose land has been invaded by foreigners, there were also Wars repeated between the French and the British. As a consequence by 1760 France was overcome by British, and its colonies were taken over by Britain. The four distinct English regions were New England, the Chesapeake Bay Colonies (Upper South), the middle Colonies, and the Southern colonies (Lower South) on the eastern seaboard. However, some region added to the frontier, historians have as fifth of which consequently war never separated which become organized. Sadly, by 1620 a serious percentage of the indigenous Indian people living in the eastern region had been all but totally destroyed by disease. Although there is no valid ground for drawing a conclusion as to the cause, it was highly speculated that earlier decades explorers and sailors possibly introduced it to them as invaders into the foreign land (Wiecek, 1977).

During the Atlantic Slave-Trade, also called the Transatlantic Slave-Trade or the Euro-American slave trade involved the transportation by slave traders took place across the Atlantic Ocean from the 16th century unto the 1800s in America.

The general cast of mind of slave shipowners was to enslave African people in West Africa mainly by the Americans captured as cargo to be sold in the United States to the Americans as easily and quick as possible, and as cheaply as possible to work on all sorts of plantations.

The triangular trade route was actively used by the slave trade and its Middle Passage and went on from the 16th to the 1800s by the passage of the Thirteenth Amendment. The biggest of those who were enslaved and transported in the transatlantic slave trade during the Era were the people from Central and West Africa. And these were African people who were first captured by other Africans, or half-European merchant princes and then sold to Western European slave traders. However, a small number of African people were directly captured by slaver traders in coastal raids; these were brought to the Americas also.

Generally the Portuguese, European slave traders did not take part in the raids. That was because the Europeans in sub-Saharan Africa life-expectancy were less than one year during the time of the slave trade. This period was before the development of the quinine for the treatment for malaria. The economies of the South Atlantic and Caribbean were particularly dependent on labour to not only work in sugarcane but other commodities. The work in sugarcane was seen as critical by those Western European states.

The estimation for the number of Africans that were shipped into slavery across the Atlantic during the Atlantic Slave Trade Era is currently about 12 million to 12.8 million over a period of 400 years. As for the Atlantic slave trade, this began in AD 1444, when Portuguese trader brought the first large number of slaves from Africa to Europe (Fall 1994).

That is not counting the millions of more slavers that died as a consequence of slave raids, wars and also at the hands of slave masters and slave catchers. Even en route to the coast for sale to European slave trades many slaves dies as over packed cargo, at the hands of slave catchers as well as the Ship captains. Some 1.2–2.4 million slaves died during voyages and millions more died in camps in the Caribbean after having arrived to the New World (Domingues, 2013). Ultimately, African slaves people were sold for labor to southern whites to mainly to work on "cotton plantations, in sugar, rice fields, on tobacco plantations, coffee and cocoa plantations also in gold and silver mines." and among other menial jobs, including domestic servants." In the days of the Slave-trade once a farmer purchased a slave and brought him or her to his farm; the white slave-master gave his initial slave a first name psychological brand with his surname or last name, which was also the name of his plantation (Fage, 1998).

Understand that the first African Slave landing in Virginia was not the Beginning of Slavery in America

Some nineteen to twenty African enslaved people first arrived in Jamestown, Virginia, and this act set the pattern to be followed for slavery in North America in 1619. Slavery composed more than a demand for just field hands, but rather laborers—carpenters, masons, cattlemen, nurses etc. Slave colonies developed into a society and economic complex communities, so much so that slavery spilled out into all walks of life. Slaves were everywhere—in the towns, on American frontiers, etc., that is, the political and geographical area near or beyond a boundary or a ‘front,’ but it is often used in the context of geographical area and boundary (William 1970). In that way, history shows America’s involvement in the Atlantic slave trade, which was until 1865, passed off the Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States of America by Congress on January 31, and then ratified on December 6, 1865. It abolished slavery in the United States of America. And thereby it provided that neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States (National Archives 2020).

Historically, the prevailing sentiment is that the first African slaves arrived in 1619 in Jamestown, the first settlement of the Colony of Virginia, and they were not the beginning of slavery in America as history has shown, and many historians agree. However, the Transatlantic slave trade actually began during the fifteenth century, when Portugal finished their voyage to and from Africa with some of its indigenous people enslaved. And then other European kingdoms followed in pursuit; they were finally successful in expanding overseas and thereby reached Africa. The historical sentiment is often that slavery began in America in 1619, but history shows us that African enslaved people arrived in North America sometime as early as the 1500s.

Yet 1619 was a momentous occasion (that is, an event or change of great importance, especially if it has a bearing on the future) in the history of slavery. At the least it was a turning point in American history in relation to slavery, but it was certainly not the beginning of slavery in America. It was more than four hundred years ago, August 20, 1619, as history reveals, that an English armed ship—owned and officered by private individuals, holding a government commission, and authorized for use in war—or a privateer ship, reached Point Comfort on the Virginia Peninsula (that is, a piece of land almost surrounded by water or it is extended out into a body of water). The ship carried some Negroes, slaves aboard who were said to have been exchanged or traded for food, or food were exchanged for the slaves. One way or the other, they were sold for food, or they were exchanged for food. This type of slave trade had never before occurred in the English North America, which was shortly revealed to the Virginia Company of London.

The year 1619 marked a momentous occasion in the long history in European colonies of slavery, and as a result, it set the stage for the beginning of what became the institution of slavery in America. What is now the capital city of present-day Angola, the African slaves aboard the ship that arrived in Virginia in 1619 had come from the port city of Luanda, as it is today Angola. It was previously a Portuguese colony, and most of the slaves are believed to have been seized from the Kingdom of Ndonga by slave capturers during the war between Ndonga and Portugal. Historians lack the facts about much of who the men and women of the ship’s cargo were sold during their arrival at Jamestown in 1619, or even what exactly happened to them (Anstey 1975).

However, later, some of their names were revealed, as also the names of their slave owner or slave master, and their child’s name. Surprisingly interesting, this reveals the beginning of slaves in America taking on their master’s surname or last name. Ultimately, the original date of African people’s roots as slaves in England’s mainland American colonies has been lost in history, but it could have been as early as the 1400s, and in the region that later became the United States. African people’s roots in the Americas before colonization (that is, prior to 1619) were not only hundreds of thousands of Africans, but they survived colonies in the Americas and the New World. History reveals that the first enslaved African taken against his will is 1441, and these were put aboard European ships. Not until the Spanish occupied Florida in the sixteenth century, there were no slaves in the region of what would become the United States; and before, there were not any (Haywood 1585–1660).

Understand why slave Masters gave their African Slaves their Surnames or last Names

The first known African slaves brought to Jamestown in Virginia in 1619 were sold for victuals (those are foodstuff); subsequently some came to be known by their slaveholder’s or slave master’s surname or last name. This was done for identification purposes, especially on Southern plantations, to identify whose slaves they were or the plantation from whence a slave came or belonged. The fact is when a slave was brought to a plantation or farm, their slave master branded him or her with his own name or surname. That was to identify who he or she was and whose farm or plantation he or she belonged. This was most widely accepted in the beginning of African slavery in the region that became known as the United States. After the Emancipation, the slaves then adopted their slave owner or slave master’s surname or last name after he or she was set free. It was actually done for identification rather than for the love of their master.

Prominent black Americans such as the former heavyweight boxer Muhammad Ali, the greatest boxer of all time, changed his name. He was born on January 17, 1942; he changed his name from Classius Marcellus Clay Jr. to Muhammad Ali. And Louis Abdul Farrakhan, the leader of the religious group Nation of Islam, who was born May 11, 1933, as Louis Eugene Walcott, formerly known as Louis X, changed his name to Louis Abdul Farrakhan. In 1955, Louis Eugene Walcott Farrakhan joined the Nation of Islam, and he replaced his surname with X. His alternative titles are Louis Abdul Farrakhan, Louis Eugene Walcott. This was a custom among the Nation of Islam followers; said followers considered their family names to be of white slaveholders or slave masters. And with or without controversy, it is true that black American surnames are historically associated with their roots of the slave masters of the Atlantic slave trade era for some four hundred years (Mamlya 2020).

This was an attempt to assure them to have rid their person—and not their bloodline, lineage, pedigree, or genealogy—of their slave name and thereby tuned more to an African heritage. Whereby their male ancestral line would not be associated with white slave masters. The Nation of Islam encourages black Americans to change their surname from their slave masters’ names. The honorable Elijah Muhammad wrote extensively on the subject of slaves having their slave master’s names. You must remember that slave-names will keep you a slave in the eyes of the civilized world today (Deburg 1997). This is just a sample of his writings. So during the slave trade era, slaves brought to a slave master’s plantation were made to abandon their African names and were given a first name by choice of their slave master, with his last name attached to it.

An American slave only had his or her slave master’s last name to identify his or her lineage subsequent to the Emancipation, or once he or she was set free. And this was very important because it was a big help in the Negroes’ quest to trace their family tree by their family surname. Trying to find relatives and significant others could only be done by the last name of the last farm or plantation known, whose slave master’s farm or plantation was named by his surname or it carried his surname. For slaves’ identities, it was the combination of their slave master’s last name and name of his plantation that gave them their identity when traveling or once off the farm. During the Atlantic slave trade era, slaves were given names such as their Master. When slaves on the plantation reproduced, they were able to give first names to their child, though it did carry the last name of the slave master, such as Master Tom Harvey. For example, an escaped slave looking for a child sold away from its parents to another plantation could not only search for the child by last name of Master Harvey, but also the Harvey Plantation.

Slaves lived in huts on the plantations in the South, in a small plantation community, neither spread out nor far from their master’s quarters or mansion. In those days of slavery, in the slave community, they did not have family reunions, but they did have community reunions. And they all had the same last name of their plantation’s slave master.

Sarah (Sally) Hemings was Thomas Jefferson’s (one of America’s Founding Fathers) black slave concubine. Her last name, Hemings, was her mother’s last name: Elizabeth Betty Hemings. She was a mixed-race enslaved woman in colonial Virginia. But she had the last name of John Hemings, which was the captain of a slave trading ship she was aboard as his privilege slave. Though she was born in 1735 on the Eppes Plantation, owned by Francis Eppes, she had the last name of her mother’s slave master’s name, the ship captain.

Even when a slave searched for another slave from one plantation to another plantation, he or she needed to know the last name of that particular person’s original slave master. That was because when a slave was sold from one slave master’s plantation to another, he or she had to abandon their former slave master’s surname and embrace their current slave master’s surname. Their surname was their mark of identification and not their first name. Actually, by means of slave masters giving enslaved individuals their last name, he adopts them as an informal stepchild, as sometimes today children are adopted by a second marriage. In the days of the Atlantic slave trade era, their plantation slave master’s last name was a big help to slaves to have their master’s last name as identification, which implied a very personal and intimate relationship to him, insomuch as his property (Manning 1994).

Lynching Noose

A slave master’s last name gave his slaves not only identity but also protection from slave catchers, who raped female slaves, whipped, beat, branded, murdered, mutilated, hanged, or lynched runaway slaves. Slaves who were not compliant were punished in this way; all punishment was in response to disobedience or to acquire compliance. However, sometimes slaves were abused by their slave masters or overseers to assert dominance, or let’s say to show who is the boss. Punishment for slaves could be carried out by their slave master, his wife, their male children, the overseer of the slaves, or their slave master’s driver. Sometimes overseers will have a whipped slave’s open wound rubbed with turpentine or red pepper. Slavery was brutal; it was an evil hellhole, a way of life representative of hell on earth with its cruelty imposed on slaves, African Americans, Afro-Americans, and/or blacks or African people. During American slavery, planters were slave masters. In the United States, planters were a Southern aristocrat, and in turn, a socioeconomic caste of Pan-American society that dominated the 1700s and the 1800s (Rice 1999).

Chapter 2

The Underground Railroad during American Slavery

What the Underground Railroad was during American Slavery of Antebellum South

During American slavery, as cruel as slavery was, it was no more evil than the men and women who advocated it or implemented it; they were the roots of the evil or wickedness of slavery and American slavery itself. In spirit form they was Satan in the flesh, depicting possession of bad spirits and of demons. The difference between South and North of the United States of America was freedom or captivity, bondage or slavery. Runaway slaves from plantations in the South were always trying to escape and reach the North, where slavery was illegal, and thereby he or she could be free again. From the days of the Atlantic slave trade, until sometime in the 1850s, this was the sentiment of runaway slaves.

The Underground Railroad was formed sometime in the early 1800s, and it ran north and constantly grew until the United States of American Civil War began. Said by 1850, the suggested estimation of slaves had escape was that of a 100,000 by virtue of the Underground Railroad.

The Underground Railroad was made neither by the hands of man nor underground rails, and not only is that so, but also it was not physically under the ground or even a railroad at all. Instead it was psychological, and it existed in the minds of the Underground Railroad workers, and it played out in the real world as a secret railroad under the ground. It was undercover, disguised, or camouflaged, and in turn a secretive clever means to set American slaves free. It got its name from the process or way of helping slaves escape from the South to the North in secret, mainly under the cover of darkness as their main disguise, yet by the light of day when it was deemed necessary (Blackett 2014).

Railroad

The Underground Railroad was a secret network routes and safe houses established in the United States the early 1800s by Isaac Tatem Hopper of Quakerism. It was used by enslaved African-Americans to escape into the Northern states which were the region of the United States historically identified as Free States in America, and escape to Canada was a means for freedom.

Undoubtedly, Harriet Tubman was the human conductor