Notes4proj.

 Lexi- Cultures and Customs of slaves ·  African Americans came in greater numbers than any other immigrant group ·  They came against their will ·  Those factors contributed to their need for a common culture that continued from one generation to the next, holding them together with a strong identity of their own ·  Culture let them have a sense of dignity ·  Supported each other and gained strength when they needed it     ·   Opportunities in quiet moments to laugh, love, celebrate, and play ·  African American culture gave them courage to seek abolition and freedom- they kept hope alive and fought for freedom ·  Songs and dances led to gospel songs which are still around today ·  First enslaved Africans came from many different religions- elements in common ·  Good and evil spirits- dead ancestors watched over the lives of their descendents ·  One high god-obeah0 contact the spirit world in order to influence events in the material world- curing a sick person- causing sickness in an enemy ·  Punishment for obeah were severe- death penalty

Regan- Life and Role of slave - Sarah- Plantation Life--Slaves and Overseers Cristina- Justfication of slave & differences in how slave owners treated their saves - Justification:
 * The normal work day was about 15-16 hours a day durring harvest time, seven days a week.
 * Mostly young children (ages 6-10) would work as a water carrier, and children (ages 10-12) would be assigned to do weeding.
 * The punishments on the plantation were brutal. The punishments were mutilation, chaining, branding, and murder.
 * There would also be whippings, beatings, and drownings, and hangings.
 * The food was normally cornmeal, and salt pork. Because of the lack of vitamins, the slaves would get a lot of diseases.
 * The overseer would observe the slaves as they worked. Normally he would be the one who would punish the slaves by whipping, and beating the slaves.
 * The links that I used: http://cghs.dadeschools.net/slavery/antebellum_slavery/plantation_slave_life/health.htm
 * Southerners took it upon themselves to take care of the inferior beings by clothing, feeding, and housing them.
 * Southern Slaves were better of then many Northern immigrant workers
 * Slavery was key to national prosperity
 * Slavery was virtal for the continuation of the superior southern lifestyle of grace and good-manners (this and ^^=http://www.u-s-history.com/pages/h244.html)
 * In the Christian world, the most important rationalization for slavery was the so-called "Curse of Ham." According to this doctrine, the Biblical figure Noah had cursed his son Ham with blackness and the condition of perpetual slavery. In fact, this story rested on a misunderstanding of Biblical texts. In the Bible,Noah curses Canaan, the ancestor of the Canaanites, and not Ham. But the "Curse of Ham" was important in that it was the first justification of slavery based on ethnicity.
 * Slaves, in Aristotle's view, lacked the higher qualities of the soul necessary for freedom.  (http://www.digitalhistory.uh.edu/black_voices/voices_display.cfm?id=6 for this bullet and ^^)

- Differences in Treatment:
 * Slaves were whipped no matter what gender
 * Female slaves were sometimes chose as mistresses for the masters
 * If a baby was the masters child but its mother was a slave it was a slave too and could be sold at any time and the mother could do nothing about it
 * Women as well as men worked in the field but normally only women cooked or worked up at the main house.
 * Men had the harder work of carying loads or pulling something.
 * Punishments were the same. All slaves got branded no matter what age or gender. If you were caught doing something wrong, you were branded in front of a crowd and scarred for life.
 * The amount of whippings given to a slave was not based,again, on gender or age but on what they did.
 * A slave could be beaten to death and have no say
 * “All slaves want to be free” and states, “I can tell by myself what other slaves feel, and by what they have told me. The man that says slaves be quite happy in slavery – that they don’t want to be free – that man is either ignorant or a lying person. I never heard a slave say so.”

 