Discovering Black America Quotes

“The first newspapers written, edited, and published by African Americans appeared in the northern United States and Canada beginning in the early 1800s. They focused primarily on issues that were important to the black community, including the abolition of slavery and the rights of free blacks.

Samuel E. Cornish and John B. Russwurm published the first black-owned and operated newspaper in America for African Americans. Freedom's Journal covered international, national, and regional news and provided its readership with useful information.”
― Linda Tarrant-Reid, Discovering Black America: From the Age of Exploration to the Twenty-First Century

“During the American Revolution, the British offered emancipation to any enslaved person who fought on their side. This military tactic infuriated the Patriots and caused pandemonium on the southern plantations as thousands of slaves escaped and joined the British Army or sought refuge behind enemy lines.”
― Linda Tarrant-Reid, Discovering Black America: From the Age of Exploration to the Twenty-First Century

“Religion has always been an important staple in African American culture. During slavery, Africans were forbidden from practicing their own spiritual beliefs brought with them from Africa. It was against the law, in most of the colonies, for blacks to gather in groups larger than three. As a result, they were not allowed to form their own churches. The enslaved had to worship with their masters at their churches or secretly, in out-of-the-way meeting places.

Religion was one of the ways slaveholders kept the enslaved in bondage. Slaveholders converted thousands of enslaved Africans to Christianity, with the belief that they were saving people they considered "inferior," and they often cited the Bible to validate this idea. They also used the fear of God to enforce a slave's obedience.”
― Linda Tarrant-Reid, Discovering Black America: From the Age of Exploration to the Twenty-First Century

“Phillis Wheatley, a young slave girl, published a collection of poems titled 'Poems on Various Subjects, Religious and Moral' in 1773, when she was around twenty years old, becoming the first enslaved African in America to publish a book of poetry.”
― Linda Tarrant-Reid, Discovering Black America: From the Age of Exploration to the Twenty-First Century

“In 1641, Massachusetts became the first colony to recognize slavery as a legal institution. By the mid-1600s, slavery was evolving into a race-based institution: the enslaved were identified by the color of their skin.”
― Linda Tarrant-Reid, Discovering Black America: From the Age of Exploration to the Twenty-First Century

“The earliest blacks to arrive in North America were not the shackled Africans who were forced to migrate from Africa to the New World during the journey called the Middle Passage in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Some of the first Africans or people of African descent to step foot on the American continent were navigators, translators, and other seamen who worked aboard European ships during the Age of Exploration in the fifteenth century. Some who sailed were free, while other were enslaved.”
― Linda Tarrant-Reid, Discovering Black America: From the Age of Exploration to the Twenty-First Century