African American Lives The Struggle for Freedom

1. Ancient Africa. From Human Beginnings to the Rise of Egypt. The Spread of Islam. The Emergence of West African Kingdoms. Central African Kingdoms. African Ways of Life. First Person: Leo Africanus Describes Timbuktu. First Person: King Sundiata's Triumph over the Ghanaian King (oral legend). First Person: Praise-chant for OgÚn, Deity of Iron and War. First Person: African Proverbs. 2. Africa and the Atlantic World. Africa and Europe: The Fatal Connection. Africa and the Rising Atlantic World. The Trauma of Enslavement. Early Africans in North America. First Person: Oladuah Equiano Describes his Enslavement. First Person: Slave Ship Captain Explains Bargaining for Slaves on African Coast. First Person: A Slave Ship Surgeon Describes the Middle Passage. First Person: Ottobah Cugano Describes Mid-Atlantic Slave Mutiny. 3. Africans in Early North America, 1619-1726. The First Africans in English North America. The Fateful Transition. Defining Slavery, Defining Race. Slavery and Race North of the Chesapeake. Beyond English Boundaries. First Person: Francis Payne Leaves a Will. First Person: A Virginia Planter Defines Slavery (1705). First Person: White Convict James Revel Relates Laboring with Africans. First Person: The First Antislavery Protest. 4. Africans in Bondage: Early Eighteenth Century to the American Revolution. Colonial Slavery at Full Tide. The Negotiated Bondage. Afro-Floridians and Afro-Louisianans in North America. Becoming African American. Forging Freedom. First Person: Petitioning Boston Slaves Lament Family Life (1773). First Person: Venture Smith Tells of Early Freedom. First Person: Redeeming Sin: A Black Christian's Account. First Person: The Character of Job Ben Solomon. 5. The Revolutionary Era: Crossroads of Freedom. Opposition to British Tyranny and the Fever of Freedom. African Americans and the American Revolution. Rhetoric and Reality in the New Nation. The Constitutional Settlement. The Resettlement of African American Loyalists. First Person: Lemuel Haynes Calls for Universal Liberty. [read more]