AMH 2097 Mid Term Study Guide Readings and Key Terms from Readings Chapter 1 Basic Concepts Dominant group from the late 1600s forward defined itself as white They put into place a pervasive racial hierarchy with a racial status continuum that places white Americans at the top and African Americans and other Americans of color at or near the bottom Ethnocentrism described by William G Sumner as the view of things in which one s own group is the center of everything and all others are scaled and rated with reference to it Stereotype an overgeneralization associated with a racial or ethnic category that goes beyond existing evidence Discrimination unequal treatment to people other than the dominant group Chapter 2 A Nation of Immigrants Chapter 3 English Americans The Dominant Culture and US Institutions Language There was no official language then which signals the huge impact of early English colonists and their descendants Religion Various English denominations represented a variety of beliefs and practices Throughout the majority of the beginning of the US the main religion was protestant Education There were few educational opportunities in the colonial period so more affluent parents sent their children to private schools Later on public schools came about and eventually schools became the best place to assimilate immigrants Political Institutions Office Holding The laws and traditions were more or less inherited from the English and their concrete application today by English immigrants descendants Along with that the majority of the major office positions as various political levels throughout U S history have been filled by English Americans Economic Institutions The forms of capitalism that dominated much of northern Europe during colonial times shaped the colonies economic system Chapter 4 Africans African Americans Examples of Slave Codes laws that defined the low position of slaves in the U S 1 A slave could not marry or even meet with a free Black 2 Marriage between slaves was not legally recognized 3 A slave could not legally buy or sell anything except by special arrangement 4 A slave could not posses weapons or liquor 5 A slave could not quarrel with or use abusive language towards whites 6 A slave could not posses property including money except as allowed by his or her owner 7 A slave could make no will nor could he or she inherit anything 8 A slave could not make a contract or hire himself or herself out AMH 2097 Mid Term Study Guide Primary Sources 9 A slave could not leave a plantation without a pass noting his or her destination and time of return 10 No one including Whites was to teach a slave and in some areas even a free Black to read or white or to give a slave a book including the Bible 11 A slave could not gamble 12 A slave had to obey established curfews 13 A slave could not testify in court except against another slave o John Barbot pg 65 an agent for the French Royal African Company his story is about the mistreatment of blacks as they are kidnapped or sold into slavery He notes how other African Americans specifically treat them bad and sometimes even sell their families or neighbors o Thomas Bluett pg 66 British man who went to go see Job his story is about a West African named Job who was accidentally put into slavery and his attempts to tell his father what happened so he could reclaim him o James Barbot Jr pg 68 a sailor aboard an English slaver his story is about a slave revolt on the ship to America o Alexander Falconbridge pg 70 a surgeon aboard salve ships his story offers a vivid account of Middle passage He talks about how the slaves state of health are inspected and then how they are stowed what they are fed on ship how they are punished what kind of exercise they must do and other activities takes place during the middle passage o Olaudah Equiano pg 73 an African Slave who was kidnapped separated from his sister describes his time on the slave boat and then talks about his time with his master and what the other slaves he watched had to go through o Venture Smith pg 75 was kidnapped at a young age was in slavery until he was 31 then bought his own freedom He fished and worked until he was able to buy his wife and children s freedom and then ended up being a slave owner himself o Omar Ibn Seid pg 78 captured and sold into slavery where he spent the rest of his life He writes about his alleged transformation from a Muslim into a Christian o Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl by Linda Brent Harriet Brent Jacobs pg 79 talks about the compromise of 1850 which included the right to take back any runaway slave from the north The slaves write about their experiences with this new law o Charles Ball pg 87 served more than 40 years in bondage before escaping and eventually writing an autobiography about his experiences specifically involving religion o Culture and Religion in the Slave Community pgs 81 89 Practicing religious beliefs while enslaved with strictly prohibited as the slaveholders didn t want the slaves to get together and revolt Despite this many slaves got together anyways and practiced a variety of religions in AMH 2097 Mid Term Study Guide secret churches on the plantations You can see both African and American traditions in the stories about religion as religion is a universal thing even if not all the details are exactly the same o Thirteenth Amendment pg 89 Abolished slavery throughout the United States o The Black Codes 9pg 90 All black codes gave freed people the right to make contracts and to buy own and sell property Some subjected them to the same criminal laws and punishments that covered white people others subjected them to the harsher criminal laws that had covered free black people before the war o Fourteenth Amendment pg 92 secured African American citizenship and rights beyond constitutional doubt o Fifteenth Amendment pg 94 The right of citizens of the United States to vote despite race color or previous condition of servitude o Violent Resistance to Equal Rights in the South pg 94 All of the men in these testimonys seem to have a negative connotation of the KKK They are described as tyrants who beat and whip people for reasons such as voting the wrong way or for simply being a competition for labor Chapter 5 Irish Americans Scotch Irish Protestant immigrants from Northern Ireland some of whose ancestors are said to have immigrated to Ireland from Scotland This term was seldom used in the first two centuries of
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