Richard Bell
Publisher
The Great Courses
Pub. Date
2020.
Language
English
Description
Runaway slaves in Virginia and the Carolinas had limited options. They could head for the coast or down to Spanish-controlled Florida, but some runaway slaves simply disappeared into the backcountry. Find out where these "maroons" went, how they lived, and what dangers they faced if discovered.
Publisher
The Great Courses
Pub. Date
2020.
Language
English
Description
Continue your study of the Civil War with a look at the role of black soldiers. Review what life was like for them in a predominantly white army, and the ill treatment many received. Then shift your attention to the role of black women during the war, many of whom served as cooks and nurses in Union hospitals. Survey the incredible wartime career of Harriet Tubman.
Publisher
The Great Courses
Pub. Date
2020.
Language
English
Description
The history of the early 21st century may show racism is alive and well, but so, too, is slavery. Around the world, 20 to 40 million people are enslaved. To conclude this series, survey several case studies of slaves around the world and in the United States. What lessons can we draw from history?
Publisher
The Great Courses
Pub. Date
2020.
Language
English
Description
At the turn of the 19th century, social and economic conditions were shifting inside the United States, and President Jefferson signed into law an act prohibiting the importation of slaves. Learn about the mass migration of slaves from Virginia into the Deep South of Louisiana that resulted, and how this migration transformed the country.
Publisher
The Great Courses
Pub. Date
2020.
Language
English
Description
While American colonists fought for independence against their British oppressors, the war provided free and enslaved African Americans an opportunity to fight their own war against slavery. Professor Bell introduces you to black militiamen and soldiers on both sides of the Revolutionary War, and reveals the setbacks they faced after the war.
Publisher
The Great Courses
Pub. Date
2020.
Language
English
Description
Among runaway slaves, men outnumbered women nearly two to one, but that doesn't mean women played no role in resistance. As this episode will make clear, women practiced several strategies for resistance, critically important because of the prevalence of assault on plantations. A woman named Phibbah provides a fascinating case study.
Publisher
The Great Courses
Pub. Date
2020.
Language
English
Description
The end of the Civil War brought legalized slavery in the United States to an end, and 3.5 million freed slaves in the South stepped into an uncertain future. Dive into some of the many challenges Americans (white and black, southern and northern) faced in the subsequent years.
Publisher
The Great Courses
Pub. Date
2020.
Language
English
Description
Begin your course with an exploration of the long war against slavery, which began centuries before the American Civil War. Professor Bell offers a survey of resistance among enslaved Africans in the 17th and 18th centuries and outlines five generational periods in the long struggle to end slavery.
Publisher
The Great Courses
Pub. Date
2020.
Language
English
Description
The American slave trade began in Africa. It is an uncomfortable truth that African rulers and merchants played a hand in supplying slaves to Europeans. However, a look at the African continent also shows us the first strategies of resistance, from defensively trying to elude capture to offensive efforts to get away from the hellish confinement of European forts.
Publisher
The Great Courses
Pub. Date
2020.
Language
English
Description
There is more to fighting slavery than achieving legal liberty, a simple truth that this country's first generation of free black leaders discovered in post-Revolutionary War northern cities. See how the expanding free black population in Philadelphia, New York, and elsewhere looked for ways to help themselves.
Publisher
The Great Courses
Pub. Date
2020.
Language
English
Description
Slavery in the British Empire has its roots in the trading economy of the 16th century. See how the Englishman John Hawkins cut into the Portuguese slave trade in the New World, which led to the founding of the Royal African Company, the largest slaving operation in the Atlantic.
Publisher
The Great Courses
Pub. Date
2020.
Language
English
Description
Delve into the colonization movement, an effort that sprang to life in the 1810s to send black people from America to Africa. Consider the questions this movement posed for African Americans: Where was home? Were they African or American? Where did they belong? Investigate both sides of this controversial movement.
Publisher
The Great Courses
Pub. Date
2020.
Language
English
Description
Uncle Tom's Cabin was a blockbuster novel that depicted the flight to freedom. Consider this depiction from two very different vantages: the world of the author, Harriet Beecher Stowe, and the life of Harriet Tubman, who was at the center of immediate and decisive steps being taken by enslaved people.
Publisher
The Great Courses
Pub. Date
2020.
Language
English
Description
Although the 13th Amendment outlawed race slavery in America and the Civil War is far in the past, the legacy of slavery and the fight for equal protection and representation among black Americans has been an ongoing struggle. Reflect on the effects of Jim Crow, the civil rights movement, and the state of race relations in America today.
Publisher
The Great Courses
Pub. Date
2020.
Language
English
Description
John Brown's failed raid on Harpers Ferry is one of the most famous antislavery actions before the Civil War. Who was he, and why was this raid so important? Was it an act of revolution or terrorism? Reflect on the irony that he achieved in death what he so palpably failed to achieve in life.
Publisher
The Great Courses
Pub. Date
2020.
Language
English
Description
From the beginning of the war, enslaved people understood it to be a war of freedom, a war to destroy American slavery. But President Lincoln's charge was simply to preserve the union. Find out how this tension played out on plantations and battlefields, in Congress and in the White House, during the Civil War.
Publisher
The Great Courses
Pub. Date
2020.
Language
English
Description
Leaving the continent of Africa, the second place for resistance was aboard the slave ships as they departed for the Caribbean. Although we have limited historical records, this episode explores the suicides, runaways, and revolts on slave ships, as well as the efforts made by Europeans to control the enslaved.
Publisher
The Great Courses
Pub. Date
2020.
Language
English
Description
The mass migration of the Second Middle Passage changed the nature of resistance to slavery. Responding to the threat of separation from their families and opposition to their sale to the Deep South, slaves participated in multifaceted and unrelenting resistance. Survey this struggle and these troubling times.
Publisher
The Great Courses
Pub. Date
2020.
Language
English
Description
Where were the moral voices among white Europeans speaking out against the heinous system of slavery? The American Quaker community had a long history of antislavery activism, from legal pamphlets to spiritual protests. Learn more about the Quaker community, its views on slavery, and its limitations in the early American economy.
Publisher
The Great Courses
Pub. Date
2020.
Language
English
Description
Learn about the confounding life of Roger Taney, who as a young man turned his back on his family's tobacco plantation and manumitted many of his own slaves. Yet, as the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, he dramatically expanded the rights of slaveholders through infamous decisions such as Dred Scott v. Sanford.