Black History
Articles on the principle people and events in American Black History
Black Peoples of America – Segregation – The Jim Crow Laws
Jim Crow was a character in an old song who was revived by a white comedian called Daddy Rice. Rice used the character to make fun of black people and the way that they spoke. The term Jim Crow came to be used as an insult against black people. In a bid to stop black...Black Peoples of America – Sharecropping
The Civil War ended in December 1865 and the slaves were free. They hoped to be treated as equal citizens, being able to vote, gain an education and live peaceably and equally with the whites. The former slaves hoped that the plantations would be divided among them so...
Black Peoples of America – Robert Gould Shaw (1837-1863)
Robert Shaw was serving as a Captain in the 2nd Massachusetts when he was asked to raise and command a regiment of black troops. This was not the first coloured regiment to be formed but it was the first to be organized in a Northern state. Shaw recruited free blacks,...Slave Punishments in the Antebellum American South
Slave Punishments: An Overview The slavery practiced in the United States prior to the Civil War was the legal establishment of human chattel enslavement, primarily, but not exclusively, of Africans and their descendants. Chattel slavery is so named because the...Slaves Work and Work Done By Slaves
In the antebellum American South, by law slaves had no say in what task they were required to do, as by legal definition they were considered property and afforded none of the constitution, civil, or criminal legal protections afforded to any citizen of the United...Black Peoples of America – The Plantation
Tobacco, cotton and sugar were grown on large-scale farms called plantations. As European demand for these crops increased, the plantations grew larger and needed more slaves to harvest the crops. 80% of all slaves shipped to the Americas were put to work on...
The Living Conditions of Slaves in the American South
The living conditions of slaves in the antebellum American South were some of the worst for slaves across history. As legal property of their masters they had no rights themselves and fared far worse than Roman slaves or medieval serfs. Africans sold as slaves in the...
Black Peoples of America – Olaudah Equiano
The autobiography of Olaudah Equiano provides us with a detailed insight into the experience of a captured slave. The following account was adapted from Equiano’s The Interesting Narrative of Olaudah Equiano or Gustavus Vassa the African by H. Wheeler. Capture...
Black Peoples of America – The Slave Auction
For more information on counter-intuitive facts of the slave auction, along with ancient, medieval, and modern history, see Anthony Esolen’s The Politically Incorrect Guide to Western Civilization. Once in the Americas, slaves were sold, by auction, to the...About the Editor
Scott Michael Rank, Ph.D., is the editor of History on the Net and host of the History Unplugged podcast. A historian of the Ottoman Empire and modern Turkey, he is a publisher of popular history, a podcaster, and online course creator.
