Historical Context of Slavery

Close to two million slaves were brought to the American South from Africa and the West Indies during the centuries of the Atlantic slave trade. Approximately 20% of the population of the American South over the years has been African American, and as late as 1900, 9 out of every 10 African Americans lived in the South. The large number of black people maintained as a labor force in the post-slavery South were not permitted to threaten the region's character as a white man's country, however. The region's ruling class dedicated itself to the overriding principle of white supremacy, and white racism became the driving force of southern race relations. The culture of racism sanctioned and supported the whole range of discrimination that has characterized white supremacy in its successive stages. During and after the slavery era, the culture of white racism sanctioned not only official systems of discrimination but a complex code of speech, behavior, and social practices designed to make white supremacy seem not only legitimate but natural and inevitable.
In the antebellum South, slavery provided the economic foundation that supported the dominant planter ruling class. Under slavery the structure of white supremacy was hierarchical and patriarchal, resting on male privilege and masculinist honor, entrenched economic power, and raw force. Black people necessarily developed their sense of identity, family relations, communal values, religion, and to an impressive extent their cultural autonomy by exploiting contradictions and opportunities within a complex fabric of paternalistic give-and-take. The working relationships and sometimes tacit expectations and obligations between slave and slaveholder made possible a functional, and in some cases highly profitable, economic system. Despite the exploitativeness and oppression of this system, slaves emerge in numerous antebellum slave narratives as actively, sometimes aggressively, in search of freedom, whether in the