black historee month

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seet deh;
the physical form is gone but the mental form is as strong as ever...
evidenced by things like violence, poverty, chronic hair & skin mutilation (strong evidence of self-hate) & communities & nations in crisis...

"black history month" has been used as an excellent brainwashing tool--- once a year throw out some post-slavery names for a month---
this is no longer acceptable; so-called blacks have to realize that their enemies will never give them true education and must develop it for themselves...
the white man throws us a bone and jump high to catch it with our tails wagging

yess mii agree widd yuh oww slaveree shaped oww afrikkans ann blakk peeps view demselves as inferior. owweva, afrikkans woo were natt enslaved inn afrikkan awlso sufferinn da lingerinn effect aff mental slaveree. itt like afrikkans woo doan see demselves as blakks cah dem view blakks as inferior. itt like blakks woo doan see demselves as afrikkans cah dem view afrikkans as inferior. itt like jamaicans woo doan see demselves as blakk cah dem see blakks as inferiors...etc....

even iff blakk histaree month iss a brainwashinn tools aff oyinbo den blakk need fe learn fe use itt brainwash blakks fe developed da proper mindset. tell y cyaan blakk use itt inna positive way like wat diss blakk historee month tredd iss hopefullee doinn

imagininn teachinn blakk yuths bout da richest person woo eva existed was a blakk man ann natt solomon. imagine teachinn blakk peeps dat egyptian king developed a christian religious beleef system dat predate christianitee


A people without the knowledge of their past history, origin and culture is like a tree without roots.
Marcus Garvey



A reading man and woman is a ready man and woman, but a writing man and woman is exact.
Marcus Garvey



There is no force like success, and that is why the individual makes all effort to surround himself throughout life with the evidence of it; as of the individual, so should it be of the nation.
Marcus Garvey

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King Mutato (1440)

In 1440, the empire of Monomotapa was under the leadership of the fierce and awesome King Mutato, or "Mutato the Great." His vast empire had been developed by Vakarang immigrants who were invaders. The Monomotapa Empire covered what is known today as Rhodesia, Kalahara, Mozambique, and into Transvaal in South Africa.

King Mutato established effective political rule, and promoted economic development and prosperity. The Monomotapa used iron technology and allied crafts, long before the Christian era. With over 4000 active mines, and gold being the leading export commodity, iron work was still highly regarded. The drive for excellence in everything produced was reflected in the artistic work throughout the empire.

The building of the temples and beautiful stone structures, rivaled the construction associated with the great pyramids in Egypt. The Monomotapa were great stonemasons and architects. According to records in stone, a highly developed civilization existed in South Africa, at the same time of the great Egyptian and Ethiopian era, in the North.

King Mutato mastered a plan to unite the Africans throughout the entire Monomotapa Empire. Their enemies knew that if they could keep the Africans fighting amongst themselves, they would be a divided people, lacking in power, and the enemy would have access to their wealth.

Mutato moved quickly to recruit, develop, and train armies, under the supervision of capable generals. Additional strategic leadership by Matope, Mutato's son, who came into power after Mutato's death, strengthened and unified Monomotapa. However, after Matope's death, Monomotapa swiftly declined, and the empire began to break up.

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Nanny of the Maroons


Nanny, known as Granny Nanny, Grandy Nanny, and Queen Nanny was a Maroon leader and Obeah woman in Jamaica during the late 17th and early 18th centuries. Maroons were a cultural mix of African slaves and the native Arawak Indian tribes that predated European colonisation. Nanny herself was an escaped slave who had been shipped from Western Africa. It has been widely accepted that she came from the Ashanti tribe of present-day Ghana.

Nanny and her four brothers (all of whom became Maroon leaders) were sold into slavery and later escaped from their plantations into the mountains and jungles that still make up a large proportion of Jamaica. Nanny and one brother, Quao, founded a village in the Blue Mountains, on the Eastern (or Windward) side of Jamaica, which became known as Nanny Town. Nanny has been described as a practitioner of Obeah, a term used in the Caribbean to describe folk magic and religion based on West African influences.

Nanny Town, placed as it was in the mountains away from European settlements and difficult to assault, thrived. Nanny limited her attacks on plantations and European settlements and preferred instead to farm and trade peacefully with her neighbours. She did however make numerous successful raids to free slaves held on plantations and it has been widely accepted that her efforts contributed to the escape of almost 1,000 slaves over her lifetime.

While Nanny lived, Nanny Town and the Windward Maroons thrived and multiplied. The British colonial administration became embarrassed and threatened by the successes of the Maroons. Plantation owners who were losing slaves and having equipment and crops burned by Maroon raiders demanded that colonial authorities act. Hunting parties, made up of British regular army soldiers, militiamen, and mercenaries (many from the free black community), scoured the Jamaican jungles.

Captain William Cuffee, known as Captain Sambo, is credited as having killed Nanny in 1733 during one of the many and bloody engagements of the war. The war itself lasted from 1720 until a truce was declared in 1739; Cudjoe, one of Nanny’s brothers and a leader during the Maroon War, was the driving force behind the treaty. After Nanny’s death, many of the Windward Maroons moved across the island to the more sparsely inhabited Western (or Leeward) side of Jamaica. Nanny Town was eventually captured by the British and destroyed in 1734.

Nanny’s life and accomplishments have been recognised by the Government of Jamaica and she has been honoured as a National Hero and awarded the title of “Right Excellent”. Currently, there are only seven such National Heroes and Nanny is conspicuous as the only woman. A modern portrait of Nanny, based on her description, appears on the Jamaican $500 note, the largest banknote in circulation in Jamaica.

Sources:
Mavis Campbell, The Maroons of Jamaica, 1655-1796 (Trenton, New Jersey: Africa World Press, 1990); Edward Long, The History of Jamaica, Volume II (T. Lowndes, Fleet Street, London 1774); Karla Gottlieb, The mother of us all: A history of Queen Nanny, leader of the Windward Jamaican Maroons (Trenton, New Jersey: Africa World Press, 2000).

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Prince Hall


Prince Hall was an important social leader in Boston following the Revolutionary War and the founder of black freemasonry. His birth and childhood are unclear. There were several Prince Halls in Boston at this time. He is believed to have been the slave of a Boston leather worker who was granted freedom in 1770 after twenty-one years of service. He then opened a successful leather goods store, owned his house, was a taxpayer, and a voter. Hall supplied the Boston Regiment with leather goods and may have fought in the Battle of Bunker Hill.

In 1775, fifteen free blacks, including Hall, joined a freemason lodge of British soldiers. They formed their own lodge, African Lodge #1, when the British left. However, they were not granted full stature by the Grand Lodge of England until 1784. The actual charter arrived in 1787, at which time Hall became the Worshipful Master. Even though they had full stature, most white freemason lodges in America did not treat them equally. Hall helped other black Masonic lodges form. Upon his death in 1807, they became the Prince Hall Grand Lodges. There are 46 lodges across the United States today.

Hall used his leadership position to organize black activism. In 1787, Hall unsuccessfully petitioned the Massachusetts legislature to send blacks back to Africa where they could be fully free and also serve as a trading partner. Later that year, Hall’s petition for black public school funding was denied. But in 1796, Boston approved his request to fund black schools, but they said they did not have a building, so Hall let the school operate from his home. Hall helped Massachusetts pass legislation outlawing the slave trade and punishing those involved with it (1788). Hall continued to work for abolition, equal rights, and economic advancement in the black society until his death.

Sources:
“Prince Hall,” Africans in America. 1998. WGBH and PBS. 12 July 2006, http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/aia/part2/2p37.html ; “Prince Hall,” Encyclopedia of Black America, Augustus Low and Virgil A. Clift, eds. (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1981), p. 412; “Prince Hall,” Gale Bibliography Resource Center. 12 July 2006, http://www.gale.com/BiographyRC/

Contributor:

Phillips, Johanna

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New York City Slave Uprising (1712)


Between twenty-five and fifty blacks congregated at midnight in New York City on April 6, 1712. With guns, swords and knives in hand the slaves first set fire to an outhouse then fired shots at several white slave owners, who had raced to scene to fight the fire. By the end of the night, nine whites were killed and six whites were injured. The next day the governor of New York ordered the New York and Westchester militias to “drive the island.” With the exception of six rebels who committed suicide before they were apprehended, all of the rebels were captured and punished with ferocity ranging from being burned alive, to being broken by a wheel.

But the swift punishment of the guilty was not enough to quell the concerns of slave owners and their political body. Within months, the New York Assembly passed “an act for preventing, suppressing and punishing the conspiracy and insurrection of Negroes and other slaves.” Masters were permitted to punish their slaves at their full discretion, “not extending to life or member.” Even the manumission of New York slaves was deterred by this bill; masters were required to pay two hundred pounds security to the government and a twenty-pound annuity to the freed slave. Despite these stringent laws, New York would escape slave rebellion for only twenty-nine years.

Sources:
Ira Berlin, Slavery in New York (The New Press: New York, 2005); www.pbs.org/wgbh/aia/part1/1p284.html

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New York Slave Conspiracy (1741)


The New York Slave Conspiracy of 1741 is an extraordinarily complex story. Some historians have dismissed the idea that slaves actually conspired to overthrow chattel bondage and gain their freedom, while others have argued that the events in New York were part of a mixed rebellion of the Atlantic proletariat. What is clear about this incident is that it is an example of an abuse of power and a misuse of law and community values by white colonists.

Between the months of March and April, ten fires blazed in the city, culminating with four fires on a single day in early April. A grand jury concluded that the fires were the work of black arsonists who had ties to a larger conspiracy to burn the city and murder all the white people. More than a hundred slaves were brought into the basement of the city hall on charges of burglary, arson and insurrection. Thirteen slaves were burned at the stake, and 70 others were sold into the backbreaking slavery of the Caribbean. Two white men and two white women were also hanged. Seven other whites were permanently expelled from New York City.

Critics from New England accused the New Yorkers of imagining the plot and did not hesitate to point out similarities between the events of April 1741 and the Salem witch trials of 1692. In fact, the nature of the confessions closely resembled the confessions at Salem. During their interrogation, slaves were beaten, harassed and heckled by whites. These tactics probably contributed to the confession of eighty-one blacks. After the confessions, executions and deportations, the New York Assembly expanded its night watch, passed a restriction on slaves fetching water at any but the nearest pump and decided to import its slaves no longer from the Caribbean, which had previously supplied New York with nearly three-fourths of its slave population, but from Africa instead because the colonists believed that African slaves were less likely to organize than slaves from the Caribbean.

Sources:
Ira Berlin, Slavery in New York (New York: The New Press, 2005); Peter Charles Hoffer, The Great New York Conspiracy of 1741 (Lawrence: University of Kansas Press: Lawrence, 2003).

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Queen Nzinga


Queen Nzinga (Nzinga Mbande), the monarch of the Mbundu people, was a resilient leader who fought against the Portuguese and their expanding slave trade in Central Africa.

During the late 16th Century, the French and the English threatened the Portuguese near monopoly on the sources of slaves along the West African coast, forcing it to seek new areas for exploitation. By 1580 they had already established a trading relationship with Afonso I in the nearby Kongo Kingdom. They then turned to Angola, south of the Kongo.

The Portuguese established a fort and settlement at Luanda in 1617, encroaching on Mbundu land. In 1622 they invited Ngola (King) Mbande to attend a peace conference there to end the hostilities with the Mbundu. Mbande sent his sister, Nzinga, to represent him in a meeting with Portuguese Governor Joao Corria de Sousa. Nzinga was aware of her diplomatically awkward position. She knew of events in the Kongo which had led to Portuguese domination of the nominally independent nation. She also recognized, however, that to refuse to trade with the Portuguese would remove a potential ally and the major source of guns for her own state.

In the first of a series of meetings Nzinga sought to establish her equality with the representative of the Portugal crown. Noting that the only chair in the room belonged to Governor Corria, she immediately motioned to one of her assistants who fell on her hands and knees and served as a chair for Nzinga for the rest of the meeting.

Despite that display, Nzinga made accommodations with the Portuguese. She converted to Christianity and adopted the name Dona Anna de Souza. She was baptized in honor of the governor's wife who also became her godmother. Shortly afterwards Nzinga urged a reluctant Ngola Mbande to order the conversion of his people to Christianity.

In 1626 Nzinga became Queen of the Mbundu when her brother committed suicide in the face of rising Portuguese demands for slave trade concessions. Nzinga, however, refused to allow them to control her nation. In 1627, after forming alliances with former rival states, she led her army against the Portuguese, initiating a thirty year war against them. She exploited European rivalry by forging an alliance with the Dutch who had conquered Luanda in 1641. With their help, Nzinga defeated a Portuguese army in 1647. When the Dutch were in turn defeated by the Portuguese the following year and withdrew from Central Africa, Nzinga continued her struggle against the Portuguese. Now in her 60s she still personally led troops in battle. She also orchestrated guerilla attacks on the Portuguese which would continue long after her death and inspire the ultimately successful 20th Century armed resistance against the Portuguese that resulted in independent Angola in 1975.

Despite repeated attempts by the Portuguese and their allies to capture or kill Queen Nzinga, she died peacefully in her eighties on December 17, 1663.

Sources:
Inge Tvedten, Angola: Struggle for Peace and Reconstruction (Boulder: Westview Press, 1997); Gary Y. Okihiro, In Resistance: Studies in African, Carribbean and Afro American History (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1986).

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Samuel “Sam” Sharpe (or “Daddy Sharpe”) led a rebellion which led to the end of legal slavery in the British colony of Jamaica. Records of who his parents were have been lost. Sharpe was a slave of an English attorney and namesake who practiced in Montego Bay.

Sharpe was baptized and subsequently became a lay deacon and leader of the congregation at the Burchell Baptist Church. Because the British allowed slaves to hold religious meetings, Sharpe started preaching about freedom from slavery. In 1831 the British Parliament began discussing the abolition of slavery throughout the Empire, and that displeased many Jamaican planters. Sharpe followed the Parliament arguments by reading local and foreign newspapers, and he made certain his congregation was apprised of the latest news concerning the abolition debates.

In December 1831, under the mistaken belief that freedom had already been granted to Jamaica’s enslaved people by the British Parliament and that local planters refused to abide by the decision, Sharpe organized a protest. That rebellion was timed to have maximum impact on the sugar cane harvest because Sharpe knew that if the cane was not cut, most of the island’s crops would be ruined.

Since Christmas Day 1831 fell on Sunday, a rest day, Sharpe assumed that the workers were entitled to both Monday (Boxing Day) and the following Tuesday off. Sharpe and his followers vowed not to work until they were paid for that day’s work. The strike soon spread to other parishes including St. James, Trelawny, and Westmoreland, and to some sections of St. Elizabeth Parish.

Sharpe’s strike did not go according to the initial plan of a passive but firm resistance. On December 28 1831, when the British militia marched on the protesters, the Kensington Estate Great House was set on fire. The rebellion lasted eight days and cost the lives of 186 slaves and 14 white overseers or planters.

Over 500 slaves were convicted of participating in the rebellion. Many were hanged and their heads were severed and placed around their plantations as a warning against future rebellions. Those who escaped the death penalty were treated brutally.

Sharpe was named the key figure of the rebellion. He surrendered to save Baptist Missionaries blamed for the revolt, and was eventually hanged in Montego Bay on May 23, 1832. Sharpe’s owners were paid £16.00 (about $20) for their “loss of property.”

Sharpe was buried like a criminal in the sands of Montego Bay Harbor, but his remains were later recovered and buried beneath the pulpit at the Burchell Baptist Church.

In 1975, independent Jamaica honored Sam Sharpe when the Teachers’ College founded in 1975 by the Ministry of Education was named in his honor. The square in Montego Bay where he was executed is now called Samuel Sharpe Square.

Sources:
Jamaican National Library http://www.nlj.gov.jm/content/sam-sharpe-1; Junius P. Rodriguez, ed. Encyclopedia of Slave Resistance and Rebellion (Westport, Connecticut: Greenwood, 2006); Delroy Reid-Salmon, Burning for Freedom: A Theology of the Black Atlantic Struggle for Liberation (Kingston, W.I. Ian Randle Publishers, 2012).

Contributor(s):
Wooten, Andre
Independent Historian

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Stono Rebellion (1739)


On Sunday, September 9th, 1739 the British colony of South Carolina was shaken by a slave uprising that culminated with the death of sixty people. Led by an Angolan named Jemmy, a band of twenty slaves organized a rebellion on the banks of the Stono River. After breaking into Hutchinson’s store the band, now armed with guns, called for their liberty. As they marched, overseers were killed and reluctant slaves were forced to join the company. The band reached the Edisto River where white colonists descended upon them, killing most of the rebels. The survivors were sold off to the West Indies.

The immediate factors that sparked the uprising remain in doubt. A malaria epidemic in Charlestown, which caused general confusion throughout Carolina, may have influenced the timing of the Rebellion. The recent (August 1739) passage of the Security Act by the South Carolina Colonial Assembly may also have played a role. The act required all white men to carry firearms to church on Sunday. Thus the enslaved leaders of the rebellion knew their best chance for success would be during the time of the church services when armed white males were away from the plantations.

After the Stono Rebellion South Carolina authorities moved to reduce provocations for rebellion. Masters, for example, were penalized for imposing excessive work or brutal punishments of slaves and a school was started so that slaves could learn Christian doctrine. In a colony that already had more blacks than whites, the Assembly also imposed a prohibitive duty on the importation of new slaves from Africa and the West Indies. Authorities also tightened control over the enslaved. The Assembly enacted a new law requiring a ratio of one white for every ten blacks on any plantation and passed the Negro Act of 1740 which prohibited enslaved people from growing their own food, assembling in groups, earning money they, rather than their owners, could retain or learning to read.

Sources:
Peter H. Wood, Black Majority: Negroes in Colonial South Carolina from 1670s through the Stono Rebellion (London: W.W. Norton and Co, 1974); www.pbs.org/wgbh/aia/part1/1p284.html

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Nat Turner

Nathaniel “Nat” Turner was born in Southampton County, Virginia on October 2, 1800, the son of slaves owned by Benjamin Turner, a prosperous farmer. Taught to read by the son of his owner, Turner studied Christianity which he interpreted as condemning slavery. Turner also began to believe that God had chosen him to free his people from slavery. He soon became known among fellow slaves as “The Prophet.”

Turner was sold to slaveholder Joseph Travis in 1830. Less than a year after the sale, Turner received what he assumed was a sign from God when he witnessed the eclipse of the sun. After sharing this experience with a few close friends, they began to plan an insurrection. While still planning the uprising, Turner saw that the color of the sun had changed to a bluish-green, which he believed was the final sign to initiate the uprising. With this confidence, Turner and seven other slaves moved forward with their plans. They first murdered the entire Travis family and eventually fifty whites in the futile effort to incite a general slave uprising. Only 75 slaves and free blacks joined the rebellion.

They were soon pursued by over 3,000 members of the state militia. Turner and his followers were confronted by militiamen. One was killed and the others were captured. The rebellion was over in 48 hours. Turner escaped and eluded Virginia authorities for two months but was finally captured and tried for insurrection and murder. He was executed six days after his trial on November 5, 1831. In retaliation for the abortive rebellion nearly two hundred innocent slaves were killed.

Although Nat Turner did not end slavery as he may have hoped, he nonetheless shook the institution to its core. Pro-slavery advocates began calling for greater restrictions on free blacks and slaves in the South and made more demands on Northern whites to cease their interference with the servile institution. Northern abolitionists, however, viewed the uprising differently and intensified their efforts to end slavery throughout the nation.



Sources:
Kenneth S. Greenburg, ed., Nat Turner: A Slave Rebellion in History and Memory (New York: Oxford University Press, 2003); http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nat_Turner; http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/USASturner.htm

Contributor:

Reed, Wilson Edward

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Uncle Tom's Cabin (1852)

Uncle Tom's Cabin, written and published by Harriet Beecher Stowe in 1852, was the most popular 19th century novel and, after the bible, was second best selling book of that century. Over 300,000 copies were sold in the United States in its first year alone. The book’s impact on the American public on the issue of slavery was so powerful that when President Abraham Lincoln met Harriet Beecher Stowe at the start of the American Civil War he stated “so this is the little lady who made this big war.”

This anti-slavery novel was controversial as soon as it appeared. Stowe used Uncle Tom’s Cabin to publicize the horrors of slavery, bringing them to the attention of thousands who heretofore had not been particularly sympathetic to the abolitionist cause. Its portrayal of slavery immediately increased the tensions between Southern slaveholders and non-slaveholding Northerners and as Lincoln’s comments suggested, brought the nation to civil war.

Despite Stowe’s desire to portray slavery as a powerful blight upon the nation, she also did much to expand anti-black sentiment through her presentation of stereotypical black characters in the novel. Some of these stereotypes include the darkskinned mammy, “pickaninny” black children, and Uncle Tom, the obedient and long-suffering servant to his white master. Although these stereotypes exist within Uncle Tom’s Cabin, and existed before the book was published, most observers believe its good in advancing the abolitionist movement, leading to the downfall of the institution of slavery, outweighed the impact of the stereotypes.

Uncle Tom's Cabin focuses on the struggles of a slave, Tom, who has been sold numerous times and has to endure physical brutality by slave drivers and his masters. One of Stowe’s central themes is that Tom, despite his suffering, remained steadfast to his Christian beliefs. He also inspired fellow slaves with his Christianity, leading to the bettering of the life his friend and fellow slave, Cassy. Tom, through his preaching of the word of God, convinces her to escape. His refusal to betray Cassy to his master leads to his own brutal death.

Stowe humanizes slaves by making Christianity a central focus of their lives. She also establishes a commonality with devoutly Christian whites of that era. Moreover her novel implies that Christianity condemns the immorality of slavery, further isolating those who support the institution.

Uncle Tom's Cabin is roughly based on the life a former Maryland slave, Josiah Henson, who struggles against slavery and who unlike the novel’s main character, eventually escapes to Canada. By relating the institution of slavery through the eyes of the slave and by focusing on the heroic struggle of one woman to gain freedom for herself and her child, Harriet Beecher Stowe’s message did much more than hundreds of abolitionist presentations to persuade Americans to oppose slavery. The book, read by hundreds of thousands of Americans and the plays it inspired, viewed by millions more, proved a powerful weapon in the campaign to end human bondage in the United States.

Sources:

Mason I. Lowance, Ellen E. Westbrook and R.C. De Prospo, The Stowe Debate: Rhetorical Strategies in Uncle Tom's Cabin (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1994); "Uncle Tom's Cabin and American Culture: A Multi-Media Archive," Edited by Stephen Railton; http://www.uncletomscabin.org/; http://zorak.monmouth.edu/~afam/stowe2.jpg; http://www.uncletomscabin.org/

Contributor:

Waggoner, Cassandra

[Wahalla]

yess mii agree widd yuh oww slaveree shaped oww afrikkans ann blakk peeps view demselves as inferior. owweva, afrikkans woo were natt enslaved inn afrikkan awlso sufferinn da lingerinn effect aff mental slaveree. itt like afrikkans woo doan see demselves as blakks cah dem view blakks as inferior. itt like blakks woo doan see demselves as afrikkans cah dem view afrikkans as inferior. itt like jamaicans woo doan see demselves as blakk cah dem see blakks as inferiors...etc....

even iff blakk histaree month iss a brainwashinn tools aff oyinbo den blakk need fe learn fe use itt brainwash blakks fe developed da proper mindset. tell y cyaan blakk use itt inna positive way like wat diss blakk historee month tredd iss hopefullee doinn

imagininn teachinn blakk yuths bout da richest person woo eva existed was a blakk man ann natt solomon. imagine teachinn blakk peeps dat egyptian king developed a christian religious beleef system dat predate christianitee


A people without the knowledge of their past history, origin and culture is like a tree without roots.
Marcus Garvey



A reading man and woman is a ready man and woman, but a writing man and woman is exact.
Marcus Garvey



There is no force like success, and that is why the individual makes all effort to surround himself throughout life with the evidence of it; as of the individual, so should it be of the nation.
Marcus Garvey

And i think if garvey was alivetoday he would have a aphorism in the order of::::

Ah Cut an pase man is an automoton......

[Wahalla]

Uncle Tom's Cabin (1852)

Uncle Tom's Cabin, written and published by Harriet Beecher Stowe in 1852, was the most popular 19th century novel and, after the bible, was second best selling book of that century. Over 300,000 copies were sold in the United States in its first year alone. The book’s impact on the American public on the issue of slavery was so powerful that when President Abraham Lincoln met Harriet Beecher Stowe at the start of the American Civil War he stated “so this is the little lady who made this big war.”

This anti-slavery novel was controversial as soon as it appeared. Stowe used Uncle Tom’s Cabin to publicize the horrors of slavery, bringing them to the attention of thousands who heretofore had not been particularly sympathetic to the abolitionist cause. Its portrayal of slavery immediately increased the tensions between Southern slaveholders and non-slaveholding Northerners and as Lincoln’s comments suggested, brought the nation to civil war.

Despite Stowe’s desire to portray slavery as a powerful blight upon the nation, she also did much to expand anti-black sentiment through her presentation of stereotypical black characters in the novel. Some of these stereotypes include the darkskinned mammy, “pickaninny” black children, and Uncle Tom, the obedient and long-suffering servant to his white master. Although these stereotypes exist within Uncle Tom’s Cabin, and existed before the book was published, most observers believe its good in advancing the abolitionist movement, leading to the downfall of the institution of slavery, outweighed the impact of the stereotypes.

Uncle Tom's Cabin focuses on the struggles of a slave, Tom, who has been sold numerous times and has to endure physical brutality by slave drivers and his masters. One of Stowe’s central themes is that Tom, despite his suffering, remained steadfast to his Christian beliefs. He also inspired fellow slaves with his Christianity, leading to the bettering of the life his friend and fellow slave, Cassy. Tom, through his preaching of the word of God, convinces her to escape. His refusal to betray Cassy to his master leads to his own brutal death.

Stowe humanizes slaves by making Christianity a central focus of their lives. She also establishes a commonality with devoutly Christian whites of that era. Moreover her novel implies that Christianity condemns the immorality of slavery, further isolating those who support the institution.

Uncle Tom's Cabin is roughly based on the life a former Maryland slave, Josiah Henson, who struggles against slavery and who unlike the novel’s main character, eventually escapes to Canada. By relating the institution of slavery through the eyes of the slave and by focusing on the heroic struggle of one woman to gain freedom for herself and her child, Harriet Beecher Stowe’s message did much more than hundreds of abolitionist presentations to persuade Americans to oppose slavery. The book, read by hundreds of thousands of Americans and the plays it inspired, viewed by millions more, proved a powerful weapon in the campaign to end human bondage in the United States.

Sources:

Mason I. Lowance, Ellen E. Westbrook and R.C. De Prospo, The Stowe Debate: Rhetorical Strategies in Uncle Tom's Cabin (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1994); "Uncle Tom's Cabin and American Culture: A Multi-Media Archive," Edited by Stephen Railton; http://www.uncletomscabin.org/; http://zorak.monmouth.edu/~afam/stowe2.jpg; http://www.uncletomscabin.org/

Contributor:

Waggoner, Cassandra

I blame Malcomn X for this the popular denegration of uncle tom....see two things Malcomn X was wrong about! and that summary is less than accurated!


having read and disliked for style as well as the christianity as the central theme of morality...uncle tom cabin i am never comfortable when the term Uncle Tom is thrown around by the black nationalist who buy into the Malcolm X with out critical aproach or even any knowledge of the character .....I detest the way that the term Uncle Tom is used as insult for any one who does not speak cliches and reduces poltical dicourse to a singular un sustainable model......

For instance Eliza runs away.....That is in it self an act of profound resistance.....precipitated by her child being sold...Her husband who had previousy run away pushed the slave hunter over a cliff.. and the woman makes him save the hunters life.. resistance, resistance humanity......

As for the middle aged man Tom he refused to whip another slave...understand the context of the character. an act of Resistance not the act of a so called uncle Tom..... He does something thatTacky Cuffy, Boukman, Christophe, Bussa, Dessalines did not do....yet we degrade Uncle Tom but see these others as heros ????? What does it gain Tom a whipping by ..... by an angered owner he defiled publicly.... Who would have done that ??????

See now we have a character Tom that is whipped for refusing to whip anotehr black man...you think one back oppened to the bone scarred ard he would have had enough.. he takes another whipping to death..... What for ????? To encourage another slave not him self to run from slavery to Kanada......Not only he enourages but he helps them.. and they whip him to death......

That is a Man!!!!!!!!!!!!!

ok he forgives those that whips him to death...........

First off, historically the book and the idea of Uncle Tom was part of the motivation that poltically led to the yanki civil war. I beleive Lincoln made a quip to that effect... On that level it was a good thing. The fact that Tom was a Christian and the epitomy of christian virtue grates against my veiw of christianity...., The abolitionist movement smuggled the book down south..

It was inspired by a real person who had escaped slavery and went to live in Kanada... (Josiah Henson) who wrote and narated a book... Stowe used another book as a reference...America Slavery by witnesses i think it was called....which was why the book was historically and social accurate.. Eliza was based on the story of a real run away... Eliza I beleve was the inspiration for Garvey... She travels to France and then goes back to Africa..... Hardly the act of an uncle Tom!


I bleiuve that one of the plantation owners was a

Part of the reason was Tom was seen as not merely a human being but a superior human being caplable of great humanity despite the de humanising treatment... That he submitted yet he does prevail...

I also have had discussions with Africans who claim that Tom was the wise elder in the African tradition...# He is being sold he saves a small white child from drowning.........again the mans humanity shines through.....

What I found irritating about the book is i read it by lamp light, and the damn theme of chrisitanity.. through out visions al naueseum.... easy conversions where the poor found comfortin the illusions... I remember after reading three pages being disappointed i had borrowed it as my one book from the mobile libary.....

About three years ago, i was at a Barbeque with a friend of my wife, a lot of consious black british people.... I was quietly flirting with the young ladies... and i heard an argument... this old guyanese drunk guy was berating his grandchildren and there for hte use of the term Uncle Tom..He was too drunk to articulate the ideas.... So i stepped in and got on the old man side and pointed out thiese facts....and the ignorance...

He said and this stuck with me...I never beleived you but u is a true Jamaican... but you are .. apprentlly when he arrive in Britian fifty odd years ago... it was the Jamaicans who would stand up and fight the rascists.....


So there twice i claim Malcolm X was wrong.......

But i know some one will wite...

" We will have to find an expert to teach us"

Well let me say i preffer Dessalines, he whipped black men, ethnicly cleansed the white and reintroduced a form of slavery in Haiti!

Jackmandora mi nuh chose none!!!!!!!

[jah_yout]

And i think if garvey was alivetoday he would have a aphorism in the order of::::

Ah Cut an pase man is an automoton......

garvey would have been appalled at the popularity of the white-man-invented month-long celebration known as "black history month"...
it symbolizes the final takeover of the afrikan mind by the white god-complex...
hence the afrikan sees himself as 1/12th the worth of the europeon...and will be content to get 1/12th of the year set aside for him to study his history since being born-again in slavery by his white god/master

[jah_yout]

I blame Malcomn X for this the popular denegration of uncle tom....see two things Malcomn X was wrong about! and that summary is less than accurated!

true---
it was Sambo who was the true villain in that story, not Uncle Tom...
unfortunately ignorance is too strong to ever reverse it...so uncle tom gets stuck with the bad name for all eternity