Period Of Slavery Research Articles

Sites of Slavery: Citizenship and Racial Democracy in the Post-Civil Rights Imagination by Salamishah Tillet

Reviewed by: Sites of Slavery: Citizenship and Racial Democracy in the Post-Civil Rights Imagination by Salamishah Tillet Michelle D. Commander (bio) Tillet, Salamishah. Sites of Slavery: Citizenship and Racial Democracy in the Post-Civil Rights Imagination. Durham: Duke UP, 2012. During her monologue, the ghost child and titular character of Toni Morrison’s Beloved recalls the Middle Passage, offering a sharp critique of the US Reconstruction project as well as the attendant consequences of transatlantic slavery and racialized violence: “all of it is now … it is always now … there will never be a time when I am not crouching and watching others who are crouching too” (248–49). The very prescience of Beloved’s rememory and, by extension, Morrison’s authorial voice captures the political sentiment undergirding the movement toward the utilization of the speculative by Black American authors, intellectuals, and artists in the post-1965 era. Through the implementation of fantastic methodologies, they have reimagined, re-configured, and deconstructed slavery, the slave narrative, and other tales and myths set during the time of bondage as a means by which to genealogize and grapple with the continued oppression experienced by descendants of enslaved Africans. This persistent renovation of slavery’s horrors remains unspeakable. The United States generally has moved on from the slavery period as if the passage of time has resolved its many traumas, effectively erasing certain pasts deemed not worthy of remembrance—those contrary to the myths that America promulgates about its founding and commitment to freedom. The cultural pushback to this grotesque, willing ignorance is precisely what Salamishah Tillet thoughtfully explores in her monograph, Sites of Slavery: Citizenship and Racial Democracy in the Post-Civil Rights Imagination. Sites of Slavery commences with Tillet’s positioning of her book’s argument as a corrective to Charles Johnson’s claim that neo-slave narratives, including his regarded Middle Passage, and historical fiction are solely about the past—that they have no bearing on the present or future. Tillet maintains that the use of speculative methods to analyze and critique America’s hypocrisies demands and has indeed resulted in varied works by “post-civil rights African American writers, artists, and intellectuals [who] respond to this crisis of citizenship by revisiting the antebellum past and foregrounding” what she refers to as a democratic aesthetic in order to attend to Black American civic estrangement (3). Sites of Slavery is interdisciplinary in its consideration of drama, dance, cinema, visual art, and literature. Tillet contemplates how cultural producers imagine sites of slavery to democratize traditional US historical narratives that have tended to slight, disremember, and/or erase Black Americans. Additionally, she reflects on how the re-constructions of these sites and texts are steeped in melancholic, disillusionment mourning and “engage in rituals of collective remembering, recuperative forms of recognition, and revisionist forms of historical representation” (4). As I will detail below, Tillet provides impressively detailed analyses about the stakes of democratizing the discourse of slavery, though her argument falters briefly regarding diasporic loss and mourning. [End Page 732] Chapter 1, “Freedom in a Bondsmaid’s Arms: Sally Hemings, Thomas Jefferson, and the Persistence of African American Memory,” is a consideration of the controversial relationship between President Thomas Jefferson and the enslaved woman, Sally Hemings, and the ways in which historians and authors have ignored, exploited, or embraced the relationship to various political ends. Through the analyses of texts that foreground the Black American woman’s experience rather than that of this founding father, Tillet maintains that each author’s recentering of the dominant perspective democratizes the historical narrative. She explores Barbara Chase-Riboud’s Sally Hemings, which focuses on how the nation’s multi-raciality exceeded the segregationist project demanded by antebellum America’s societal structure; Annette Gordon Reed’s Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings, which deconstructs the biases inherent in many scholars’ protection of the Jeffersonian narrative myth by foregrounding the romantic possibilities of the union between master and slave in her historical writing about Jefferson and Hemings; and Robbie McCauley’s play, Sally’s Rape, which figures the abject citizen as most representative of the actualities regarding the status of the nation and formulates what Tillet explains as a “lineage of...

Sobre o settling do português brasileiro

Nowadays, the debate on Brazilian Portuguese (PB) formation is divided between two hypotheses that it can be defined as externalist hypothesis (creolist) and internalist hypothesis (drift). The externalist hypothesis suggests that the distinctive aspects of PB result from a process of creolization motivated by the massive contact with African languages in the slavery period. The internalist hypothesis, though it doesn’t ignore the languages contact in the formation of PB, states that such contact wasn’t determinant to develop its distinctive features and suggests that these features refer to structural possibilities inscribed in its drift. This essay presents a brief analysis of the linguistic facts usually invoked by externalist hypothesis and presents a new argument to the internalist hypothesis from the concept of settling, proposed by Seuren (2013). This new argument points to the consequences of the general language formed in the early colonization of Brazil, from the merger of different dialects spoken by Portuguese immigrants, and binds this general language to the fact that PB is at the same time highly conservative and innovative.

Enacting power: the criminalization of Obeah in the Anglophone Caribbean, 1760-2011

More than two and a half centuries after it was first outlawed in Jamaica in 1760, obeah remains illegal in most territories of the former British West Indies. Yet, opinions on the meaning and essential nature of this controversial Afro-Caribbean spiritual phenomenon vary widely. While many contemporary West Indians hold negative views of obeah, viewing it as evil witchcraft or sorcery, others point to its widespread use in healing, protection from harm and solving a wide range of everyday problems - positive views that were also commonly held by enslaved West Indians in earlier generations. Despite the scholarly attention obeah has received, relatively little has been written about the many laws enacted against it in different territories at different periods. Offering a perspective on obeah that challenges conventional conceptions of this widely misunderstood aspect of West Indian society and culture, the core of this book is a detailed examination of anti-obeah laws, and their socio-political implications, in seventeen jurisdictions of the English-speaking Caribbean from the period of slavery to the present. Aside from chronologically tracing in each territory the development of these laws and their major provisions, the book also examines how anti-obeah legislation has helped to create and perpetuate cultural distortions that resound into the present. Anti-obeah legislation, particularly after the end of slavery in the nineteenth century, played a central role in creating public misunderstandings of the meaning and role of obeah among the West Indian masses, and led to the stigmatization and devaluation among future generations of African-derived spiritual beliefs and practices.

O Retorno dos Ex-Escravos do Brasil Para a África: Historiografia, Séculos Xvii-Xix

O artigo trata de comunidades de brasileiros ex-escravos retornados à África e propõe uma mudança de perspectiva historiográfica, que considera o inter-relacionamento entre a história dos dois continentes. São africanos retornados a partir do Brasil, nos séculos XVII e XIX, que carregaram consigo a vivência no Brasil e influíram em suas novas comunidades africanas. Com esse tema, o artigo apresenta as principais discussões da historiografia, salientando aspectos como: a cultura, a religiosidade, a família, a inserção política e econômica, a questão da etnia e da identidade. Traz um balanço dos estudos clássicos e atuais do tema e suas reflexões e demonstra a contribuição da historiografia para o avanço do conhecimento da diáspora africana. A análise é bibliográfica e delimitada pelo período de escravidão africana no Brasil.

Angelina Branković – święta władczyni w hymnografii. Zarys problemu

The aim of this article is to present the idea of divinity of power on an example of the medieval service, dedicated to the Serbian despotess Angelina Branković. The image of a ruler and a concept of power presented in the text are based on the perception of Angelina as a participant and a heiress of the sacred tradition of Branković dynasty. The service has played an important role in the creation and strengthening of the ruler image in the spiritual culture of the Orthodox Serbs. In addition to strictly liturgical function, it also served as a way of transmission of the elementary set of national religious and political ideas. Hymnography dedicated to St. Angelina was a response to the social and religious needs to canonize the native saints who certify God’s care for Serbia in the period of slavery, strengthen the national spirit, contribute to stabilizing the situation in the country.

Detection of Hepatitis B virus subgenotype A1 in a Quilombo community from Maranhão, Brazil

BackgroundThe Brazilian population is mainly descendant from European colonizers, Africans and Native Americans. Some Afro-descendants lived in small isolated communities since the slavery period. The epidemiological status of HBV infection in Quilombos communities from northeast of Brazil remains unknown. The aim of this study was to characterize the HBV genotypes circulating inside a Quilombo isolated community from Maranhão State, Brazil.MethodsSeventy-two samples from Frechal Quilombo community at Maranhão were collected. All serum samples were screened by enzyme-linked immunosorbent assays for the presence of hepatitis B surface antigen (HBsAg). HBsAg positive samples were submitted to DNA extraction and a fragment of 1306 bp partially comprising HBsAg and polymerase coding regions (S/POL) was amplified by nested PCR and its nucleotide sequence was determined. Viral isolates were genotyped by phylogenetic analysis using reference sequences from each genotype obtained from GenBank (n = 320). Sequences were aligned using Muscle software and edited in the SE-AL software. Bayesian phylogenetic analyses were conducted using Markov Chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) method to obtain the MCC tree using BEAST v.1.5.3.ResultsOf the 72 individuals, 9 (12.5%) were HBsAg-positive and 4 of them were successfully sequenced for the 1306 bp fragment. All these samples were genotype A1 and grouped together with other sequences reported from Brazil.ConclusionsThe present study represents the first report on the HBV genotypes characterization of this community in the Maranhão state in Brazil where a high HBsAg frequency was found. In this study, we reported a high frequency of HBV infection and the exclusive presence of subgenotype A1 in an Afro-descendent community in the Maranhão State, Brazil.

Abolição no Brasil: resisténcia escrava, intelectuais e política (1870-1888)

The Abolition of Slavery in Brazil raises the following questions: what was the social character of abolitionism? What historical meaning did it have? Was it a revolution or simply a step in the transition towards capitalism in the country? What interests did the abolition movement defend? What social groups were the movement’s protagonists? What role did the slave play in the process? What did the abolitionist intellectuals defend and whom did they represent? These are the questions that lead this article to reflect on the relationship between where the intellectuals stood and the possibilities and limitations of joining forces, or the «construction» of a slave and free population as a national class at the end of the period of slavery in Brazil.

Deconstructing a Theology of Defiance: Black Preaching and the Politics of Racial Identity

From its earliest origins during the slavery trade, the Reconstruction period, and Jim Crow segregation, to the dénouement of the modern Civil Rights movement, the Black Church in America has served as a vital source of collective comfort, an agent of socialization, and an outlet for active and positive social change.1 During the period of chattel slavery (c. 1619–1865), Black sacred worship emphasized an organic theology of liberation which gave its parishioners an idealistic belief that their centuries-long bondage would end by Divine intervention. In addition, the enslaved focused their spiritual energies on fashioning a communal eschatology that related their plight to a future society in which they would be treated with a degree of humanity by the dominant society. This new reality, they hoped, would allow the former slave to fully participate in American life as equal partners to their former owners.2 These lofty ideals, forged from oft-quoted historical analogies based upon preached Judeo-Christian Sacred Texts, were very important sources of inspiration to the slave and resulted in the initial configuration of an organic Black theology.3 Moreover, these theological constructs were also the primary inspiration for unique practice of Black preaching styles. Hence, these innovative practices helped to form the fundamental pillars of Black worship services well into the mid-nineteenth century. In addition, many of these religious practices carried over into the Reconstruction period when slavery had ended and well into the Civil Rights movement of the twentieth century, where the overall political objective of achieving legal and social equality was of paramount importance.

Male ancestry structure and interethnic admixture in African‐descent communities from the Amazon as revealed by Y‐chromosome Strs

Some genetic markers on both the Y chromosome and mtDNA are highly polymorphic and population-specific in humans, representing useful tools for reconstructing the past history of populations with poor historical records. Such lack of information is usually true in the case of recent African-descent populations of the New World founded by fugitive slaves throughout the slavery period in the Americas, particularly in Brazil, where those communities are known as quilombos. Aiming to recover male-derived ethnic structure of nine quilombos from the Brazilian Amazon, a total of 300 individuals, belonging to Mazagão Velho (N = 24), Curiaú (N = 48), Mazagão (N = 36), Trombetas (N = 20), Itacoã (N = 22), Saracura (N = 46), Marajó (N = 58), Pitimandeua (N = 26), and Pontal (N = 20), were investigated for nine Y-STRs (DYS393, DYS19, DYS390, DYS389 I, DYS389 II, DYS392, DYS391, DYS385 I/II). From the 169 distinct haplotypes obtained, 120 were singletons. The results suggest the West African coast as the main origin of slaves brought to Brazil (54% of male contribution); the European contribution was high (41%), while the Amerindian's was low (5%). Those results contrast with previous mtDNA data that showed high Amerindian female contribution (46.6%) in African-descent populations. AMOVA suggests that the genetic differentiation among the quilombos is mainly influenced by admixture with European. However, when restricting AMOVA to African-specific haplotypes, low differentiation was detected, suggesting great genetic homogeneity of the African founding populations and/or a later homogenization by intense slave trade inside Brazil.

Early Anti-Slavery Sentiment in the Spanish Atlantic World, 1765–1817

This article examines the dynamics of slavery and anti-slavery in the Spanish Empire prior to the Independence of the Spanish American mainland. Rather than focusing on the Spanish Caribbean and the ‘late’ period of slavery in the second half of the nineteenth century, it explores slavery and abolition in the colonial period from an imperial perspective, using early abolitionist texts, records from the Spanish Cortes of 1810–1812, and various royal decrees pertaining to slavery. Although Spain did not abolish the slave trade until 1817, and only did so with intense outside pressure, the prevailing notion that there was no native anti-slavery movement in the Spanish Empire overlooks a more complex reality. Early anti-slavery movements were relatively quiet in the late Spanish Empire, yet outlining their contours helps to illuminate the pragmatic nature of Spanish imperial rule in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. This article also shows how the development of pro-slavery and anti-slavery ideologies highlights the transatlantic nature of intellectual and political projects in this period.

A Legacy of Trauma: Caribbean Slavery, Race, Class, and Contemporary Identity inAbeng

The disruptions and transformations caused by the slave trade are largely demographic and cultural. It was through this extended and traumatic forced population transfer that Caribbean colonies across the board became dominantly black communities. For these island nations and territories, the inescapable fact of their blackness had always marked a tangible and material link with their origins in Africa. Jamaica was home to more rebel- lions than all of the other British islands combined, proof positive of the continuing identitarian role of African culture in the Caribbean during the period of slavery. Colonization's phenomenon of ethnocultural creolization marked an interpenetration of populations and practices originating both from the colonial metropole and from the African continent, such that long- held notions of race and social stratification would be have to be revised as independence approached, posing a set of complex tensions effectively articulated in Michelle Cliff's novel Abeng.

The relativity of poverty and income: How reliable are African economic statistics?

It has been argued that the fundamental cause of Africa’s current relative poverty is a lack of pro-growth institutions deriving either from the colonial system, the period of slavery, or from particular geographic or population characteristics. This article takes a fresh look at estimates of African country incomes. It subjects the available datasets to tests of accuracy, reliability, and volatility, and finds that there is very little to explain in terms of diversity of income between countries. With the exception of some resource-rich enclaves, a few island states, and South Africa, the income of one African economy is not meaningfully different from another. It is found that the majority of African countries should for all practical purposes be considered to have the same income level. The article therefore concludes that it is futile to use GDP estimates to prove a link between income today and existence of pro-growth institutions in the past, and recommends a searching reconsideration of the almost exclusive use of GDP as a measure of relative development.

Afetos e arquivos da escravidão

Este texto procura mostrar como Patrick Chamoiseau (nascido na Martinica em 1953) empreende uma reescrita dos afetos e arquivos da escravidão no romance Un dimanche au cachot (2007), dando continuidade a uma temática que já aparecia em obras precedentes. Ele efetua um trabalho de perlaboração, no sentido freudiano, ao rememorar uma história como meio de curar o trauma que foi recalcado. Chamoiseau mistura história e ficção ao tentar recriar de modo não realista um certo ambiente durante o período escravista, incorporando um personagem histórico - Victor Schoelcher - mas mostrando-o antes dos grandes eventos que protagonizou.

Barbados and the Bicentenary of the Abolition of the Slave Trade

After a brief look at the demographic and economic circumstances of Barbados during the period of slavery when distinctive Barbadian patterns were established, this article examines the various methods used by three entities in Barbados to commemorate the bicentenary. These are: agencies of the Government of Barbados, the Cave Hill Campus of the University of the West Indies and the Barbados Museum. Comparative material was also used from the islands of Dominica, St Lucia and St Vincent. Through interviews and surveys, public opinion was sought regarding these activities. The consensus was that the commemorative activities were muted for a variety of reasons. Furthermore, the meaning of 1807 was subsumed/relegated in the public consciousness by an overarching tendency to collapse/merge this date with 1834, which had greater significance.

Low birth weight of contemporary African Americans: An intergenerational effect of slavery?

The average birth weight in the contemporary African-American population is about 250 g lower than the average birth weight of European Americans. Differences in genetic and socioeconomic factors present between these two groups can explain only part of birth weight variation. I propose a hypothesis that the low birth weight of contemporary African Americans not only results from the difference in present exposure to lifestyle factors known to affect fetal development but also from conditions experienced during the period of slavery. Slaves had poor nutritional status during all stages of life because of the inadequate dietary intake accompanied by high energetic costs of physical work and infectious diseases. The concept of "fetal programming" suggests that physiology and metabolism including growth and fat accumulation of the developing fetus, and, thus its birth weight, depend on intergenerational signal of environmental quality passed through generations of matrilinear ancestors. I suggest that several generations that have passed since the abolition of slavery in the United States (1865) has not been enough to obliterate the impact of slavery on the current biological and health condition of the African-American population.

Entre o sentido da colonização e o arcaísmo como projeto: a superação de um dilema através do conceito de capital escravista-mercantil

Neste artigo, discute-se a proposta de Pires e Costa (1995, 2000) segundo a qual a economia brasileira no período escravista teria estado sujeita a uma forma específica do capital: o capital escravista-mercantil. Ela permite a superação da dicotomia entre o modelo interpretativo do Sentido da Colonização, proposto originalmente por Caio Prado Júnior, e o modelo do Arcaísmo como Projeto, proposto por Fragoso e Florentino (2001). O primeiro, por retratar a sociedade colonial como uma projeção imediata da expansão comercial européia, tem enfrentado dificuldades em acomodar as recentes evidências empíricas de que a economia colonial podia apresentar uma relativa autonomia, realizando acumulação endógena. O segundo, ao tentar de forma explícita acomodar essas evidências, acaba recusando a existência de um sentido da colonização tal como originalmente formulado. Para explicitar como o modelo do capital escravista-mercantil supera esse dilema, apresentamos uma analogia com o desenvolvimento da teoria do valor de Marx em O Capital.

The Wreck of the Ex-Slaver James Matthews

This contribution presents the progress of investigations into the wreck of the ex-slave ship James Matthews, wrecked off Western Australia in 1841. The James Matthews wreck site preserves many elements of the vessel’s structure, with the result that the basic architecture of an actual transport vehicle of the Middle Passage has been recorded in detail and can be analyzed in depth by maritime archaeologists working in tandem with naval architects. The discovery of the James Matthews wreck has made possible cross-disciplinary research of a type not previously feasible for the illegal period of slavery in the Atlantic.

The position and residential patterns of ethnic groups in Paramaribo’s development in the twentieth century

Analyses ethnic residential patterns, in terms of spatial segregation, in Paramaribo, as these developed historically, and their correlation to the changing socioeconomic position of the various ethnic groups. Authors first point out how Paramaribo is at present one of the most multiethnic and multicultural cities of the Caribbean, and discuss the continuing importance of ethnic identity and boundaries. They further describe the history of Paramaribo's development since the period of slavery and after abolition, when many Creoles migrated to the city. Hindustani started migrating in higher numbers to Paramaribo since the early 20th c., mainly to the urban periphery, and since the 1960s also more Javanese. More recently (since the 1980s) migrants to Paramaribo include Maroons, Amerindians, Chinese, and Brazilians. Authors examine in how far the residential patterns were determined by socioeconomic factors, and/or by ethnicity. They conclude that socioeconomic factors have overall become more influential in residential patterns than ethnicity. They point out that residential ethnic mixing has increased, as almost half of Paramaribo's neighbourhoods are mixed, with no dominant ethnic group, although some ethnic concentration continues, as a quarter of the neighbourhoods can be called Creole, one-fifth of them Hindustani, and Creoles (and Maroons) reside for a higher percentage in the city centre, and Hindustani and Javanese more in the urban periphery.

Listening to Caribbean history: music and rhythm in Daniel Maximin's L'Isol soleil

This article deals with the relationship between music, rhythm and black Caribbean history and identity. It begins by considering briefly some of the ways that sounds, including music and rhythm, shaped and defined the experience of slavery, and then argues that despite the importance of rhythm to this experience and to subsequent Caribbean cultural history, most critics and scholars have tended to neglect or ignore rhythm in their work. Drawing evidence from Daniel Maximin's novel L'Isol soleil (1981), the article argues that the grand historical sweep of Maximin's novel, and the recurrence of rhythm and music in the text at many key stages of Guadeloupean, Caribbean and broader black diasporic history seems to suggest an intimate bond between rhythm, music and Caribbean identity, a bond that Maximin implies has been continually strengthened, even as it has mutated, from the slavery period to the present. The article also considers some of the ways in which Maximin's work relates to that of douard Glissant, notably in terms of narrative structures, and in the authors' conceptions of history, memory and music. Finally, I suggest that Maximin's novel prefigures the current interest among historians of understanding the past through considering its auditory aspects.

Eating the black body: miscegenation as sexual consumption in African American literature and culture

In this provocative and original exploration of racial subjugation and its aftermath, Carlyle Van Thompson illumines the racialized sexual desire that reduces Black people to commodities for consumption. Eating the Black Body examines the often-sadistic forms of sexual violence during the period of slavery and its aftermath. By looking at one poem and three novels - Richard Wright's Between the World and Me, John Oliver Killens' Youngblood, Gayl Jones' Corregidora, and Octavia Butler's Kindred - that examine slavery and the Jim Crow period, Thompson investigates a wide variety of Black bodies as sites of miscegenation and sexual desire. Thompson also examines a horrific case of White male police brutality in New York City in which a Black man was sodomized. Bold and persuasively argued, Eating the Black Body will engage readers in a broad range of literary, historical, and cultural studies.