ipl-logo

Explain Why African Americans Tried To Resist Slavery

428 Words2 Pages

From 1816 to the end of slavery, how was slavery resisted? Why was it resisted in the way that you describe? African Americans enslaved in the United States tried to resist slavery in a number of different passive and violent ways. Slaves would try running away as one form of resistance, although they would not travel a relatively long distance, they would run away with the mindset of not permanently escaping from slavery, but instead to temporarily suspend their labor in attempt to bring negotiation and economic bargaining between slave and master. In these times, slave revolts were more likely to happen when the number of slaves was greater than that of the whites. Some slaves would manage to escape and become fugitives who permanently tried to escape the clutches of slavery. More than half of the runaways would head southward to growing cities, or swampy areas, some managing to resist capture for several decades.
No matter what form of punishment was dished out to the slaves, or how many prejudice laws were passed to have power over them, enslaved Africans still resisted capture and imprisonment, some even attacked slave ships from the shore and were active in shipboard revolts, all for the freedom of them and their people. Some Pregnant African women would even resist slavery themselves preferring abortion to bringing an innocent baby into a world of slavery. …show more content…

A man by the name of Denmark Vesey, a free black man, read the Old Testament from the bible in a church meeting, and spoke of Mosses’ admonition that whoever steals a man “shall be put to death.” White people in power later came to the conclusion that Denmark Vesey had surely mastered the books of the Old Testament and could readily recite them to justify that slavery was indeed contrary to god’s laws. Black churches would soon rise to become seedbeds of resistance to slavery as well as houses of

Open Document