Slave Codes, Liberty Suits and the Charter Generation – w/ Margaret Newell

Teaching Hard History

Learning for Justice

History, Courses, Education

4.2 • 588 Ratings

🗓️ 6 March 2020

⏱️ 82 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

The Americas were built on the lands, labor and lives of Indigenous peoples. Despite being erased from history textbooks after the so-called first Thanksgiving, Indigenous peoples did not disappear. Colonial settlers relied on the cooperation, exploitation and forced labor of their Native neighbors to survive and thrive in what became North America. Focusing on New England, historian Margaret Newell introduces us to the Charter Generation of systematically enslaved people across this continent.

You can find a complete transcript in the show notes for this episode, along with a list of resources to help you teach the hard history explored in this episode.

Transcript

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0:00.0	If you're an educator, you can earn a certificate for one hour of professional development
0:11.7	each time you listen to an episode of teaching hard history.
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0:26.3	Then enter the unique code word for the episode.
0:30.0	The code word for this episode is at the end of the show.
0:34.6	This is a special opportunity just for you from Learning for Justice.
0:49.8	Caesar ran away from his master, a blacksmith named Samuel Richards, in 1739, and presented himself at the home of the local justice of the peace, Joshua Hempstead.
1:02.7	And Caesar said he was a free man and no man slave because his mother, a woman named Betty, had been, he claimed wrongfully enslaved and kept in slavery, so that he had been born a free man.
1:16.7	She was probably a Pequot Indian, and as a young girl, had been separated from her family, made a refugee during King Phillips War and sold the auction in New London.
1:29.4	But these refugees were not to be sold as slaves for life.
1:35.1	Many people who acquired Indians to these auctions in Connecticut and Rhode Island
1:39.5	held them as slaves for life and then tried to lay claim to their offspring.
1:44.2	So this is basically what had happened to Caesar.
1:47.0	And Hempstead heard this case, and he sent it to a jury.
1:51.3	His community in New London decided that Caesar had been inappropriately enslaved and ordered his freedom.
1:59.0	So Caesar won a jury trial.
2:01.6	Caesar's story reminds me of the importance of grounding our teaching of heart history
2:08.6	in individual people's lived experiences.
2:11.6	Thinking about individual people helps us to remain focused on their humanity and dignity. And it also helps students remain engaged with the broader stories we're trying to tell.
2:22.3	With my American study students at Carleton College, we've been reading City of Inmates, Kelly Lytle-E Hernandez's fantastic new book.
2:31.3	City of Inmates traces the history of incarceration in Los Angeles through
2:36.0	the lens of settler colonialism. It's a story that begins with the Tongva people and their
	...

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