Which question does Grouping G answer? (answer key at bottom of page)

1.    In the United States, how do we determine who is black and who is white?

2.     How did white become the free and black the enslaved?

3.    White is “the standard.” What does that mean?

4.    Why White? 

5.    When words are inadequate, how can the arts help us feel the emotions of race?

6.     If you do not identify as black or white, where do you fit into the conversation about race?

7.    How did white become the pure category and black the contaminating one?

One Is Enslaved for Life

John Punch is the first documented person in the English colonies to be sentenced to enslavement for life. Handed down in 1640, his sentence marks the start of the Terrible Transformation—the process by which enslavement was imposed specifically on African peoples and their descendants.

Terrible Transformation

 The boats visualize the Terrible Transformation.  The top row depicts the relative numbers of laborers by geographic source (1607-1732). Note, the laborers from Europe and indigenous lands far outnumbered those from Africa.

 The bottom row depicts the relative number of laborers by geographic source (1732 to  1808). Note, the laborers from Africa far outnumbered those from both Europe and indigenous lands. The reversals are striking.

 The pool of indentured labor shrunk for many reasons:  (1) a catastrophic fire destroyed much of London, giving unemployed people the opportunity to stay at home and work as laborers to rebuild the city; (2) the bubonic plague struck around this same time, killing an estimated 25% of England’s population; (3) Britain, also in need of laborers, outlawed deceptive recruiting practices; and (4) during the American Revolutionary War (1775 to 1783), the U.S. prohibited enemy British ships carrying indentured labor from entering its ports.

 Major reasons for the decline in Indigenous enslaved included exposure to deadly epidemic diseases and genocide carried out through warfare and removal from their land. Because Indigenous peoples knew the land so well, the enslaved among them had a better chance of escaping servitude. For this reason, the English shipped many Indigenous peoples off to sugar plantations in the Caribbean or the West Indies where surroundings were unfamiliar, making attempts to escape less likely.

 Records show that between 1619 and 1675, about 4,000 Africans were forced into bondage. As forced labor from Indigenous and European populations declined, the reliance on enslaved labor from the African continent increased dramatically. Beginning in the 1680s and for the next 128 years (until 1808, when the practice of importing, but not enslaving, people became illegal in the U.S.), 386,000 Africans were forcibly transported across the Atlantic Ocean to the United States. The enslaved women among them would become the mothers, grandmothers, and great grandmothers of 3.9 million enslaved peoples of African descent living in the U.S. on the brink of the Civil War (1861–1865).