Partners to History Martin Luther King Jr., Ralph David Abernathy, and the Civil Rights Movement

1619 Stolen from Native Shores We can not dedicate-we can not consecrate-we can not hallow-this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here have consecrated it. . . . The world will little note, nor long remember, what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be dedicated to the great task remaining before us-that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion-that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain-that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom-and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.Abraham Lincoln The Gettysburg Address, 1863 In August of the year 1619, the first ship carrying African slaves arrived in the port of the Jamestown colony at the mouth of the James River in Virginia. The slaves were to be the free labor force for harvesting the profitable tobacco crop. The African slave was not permitted to assimilate into the white culture, making the color of his skin a "badge of servitude." It was nearly impossible for the African slave to escape back to Africa. Until the further development of America and Canada, the African slave had nowhere to go or hide from the slave owners. Slave laborers were able to survive and make considerable financial profits for the plantation owners, whereas white indentured servants perished, causing a financial loss. At the end of the Colonial period in American history, the Negro numbered between 400,000 to 500,000 slaves in the colonies. Three-fourths of the African slave population resided in the Southern colonies, where they made up two-fifths of the entire population. It was recorded in South Carolina that African slaves outnumbered the whites two to one. The plantation region consisted of Virginia, Maryland, the Carolinas, and the remaining Southern colonies. These lands were flat, wide coastal plains with spacious bays, and harbors and widely navigable rivers. The fertile soil near the banks of the rivers created rich agriculture. Because the tidewater swept up the river, the coast regions came to be known as the tidewater area. Tobacco was the staple crop of the tidewater region. In the Carolinas, rice and indigo were the crops and in the Deep South, or "the black belt" as it would come to be called, cottons would become king. In the Deep South, where the crop was cotton, the demand for slave labor was insatiable. Eli Whitney's invention of the cotton gin turned the South into the "Cotton Kingdom." Before the Civil War, one-half of the American goods shipped abroad was cotton. It has been recorded that between 1820 and 1860 the number of slaves grew from 1 million to almost 4 million. The price of a slave who worked the fields simultaneously increased from between $300 and $400 to $1,000 and up. The average Southern white family held one to four slaves and at the time of the Civil War an estimated 400,000 Southern white families had slaves. In some cases, if the land holdings were in the tens of thousands of acres, then the slave holdings were in the thousands as well. An average number of slaves on a large plantation ranged from six to seven thousand. With the growing demand for slaves, the great danger for freed slaves was the possibility of being kidnapped and sold back into slavery. Poor white men looked forward to becoming slave owners and the owners of a few slaves longed to become owners of many, while the wealthy landowner's rank in Southern society was determined by the number of human slaves he owned. Slavery of black people was justified by some because black people were not Christians and therefore considered savage. The U.S. ConsAbernathy, Donzaleigh is the author of 'Partners to History Martin Luther King Jr., Ralph David Abernathy, and the Civil Rights Movement' with ISBN 9780609609149 and ISBN 0609609149.