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Week 6 · Chapter

Chapter 6 — African American Experiences I: Slavery, Emancipation, and Jim Crow

Introduction to Ethnic Studies Free sample edition

The module's primary reading · ~35–45 minutes · Objective 5 (analyze African American experiences from slavery through emancipation, Reconstruction, Jim Crow, the Great Migration, and the civil rights and Black freedom movements, reading the laws and court decisions that shaped them), Objective 2 (define and distinguish the course's core concepts: race, ethnicity, and nationality; racialization and racial formation; ethnocentrism; prejudice, individual and institutional discrimination, and structural inequality; and intersectionality as distinct from adding identities together) · Read it first this week; the lecture, the slides, the tutorial, the quiz, and the workshop all build on it.

In plain language

This chapter follows the law of the United States from the arrival of enslaved Africans at Old Point Comfort, Virginia, in 1619 to the segregated railway cars of the 1940s. You will read a court case that denied Black people citizenship, a proclamation that freed some enslaved people but not others, and three amendments that changed the Constitution. You will meet Jim Crow (the system of laws and customs that kept Black and white Southerners apart and kept Black citizens from voting) and the Great Migration (the movement of millions of Black people out of the South). Along the way you will practice one habit: reading each law for what it did and what it did not do. The week ends with one family's account of leaving the South, read beside the dated record.

Why you already care about this

Picture a club (an illustrative scene) whose rulebook says that any member may vote in its elections after passing a reading test. That sounds fair. Now add one detail: the club's officers choose which passage each member reads. One member gets a short paragraph from a sports page. Another gets two pages of dense legal language. Both took "the same test", and the rulebook never mentions who gets which passage.

You have probably met a rule like that, equal on paper and unequal in practice. Maybe it was a dress code enforced on some students and not others. You can ask four questions of such a rule: who made it, whom it served, whom it affected, and how the people affected answered. This week you ask them of the laws that made slavery, the laws that ended it, and the laws that built a new system of separation after it.

By the end of this chapter you will be able to:

describe slavery in the English colonies and the United States from the 1619 arrival of enslaved Africans in Virginia, using the course's term "enslaved people";
explain what Dred Scott v. Sandford (1857) held about citizenship and place it on the citizenship thread;
read the Emancipation Proclamation (1863) for what it did and did not do;
state what each Reconstruction amendment did, and work out the years between the dated events;
explain Plessy v. Ferguson (1896), Jim Crow, and the devices used to block Black voters;
read the archive's E2 excerpt in the field's order and compare it with another group's experience.

Carry this sentence with you: Read every law for what it did — and what it left out.

Where we are

Already covered: Week 1 gave you the field's four questions and positionality. Week 2 defined race, racialization, and institutional discrimination. Week 3 taught the theories of belonging, double consciousness, and the line between immigrant and colonized or incorporated peoples. Weeks 4 and 5 read Native nations' history from removal to survivance.
This week: slavery from 1619, Dred Scott v. Sandford (1857), the Emancipation Proclamation (1863), the Reconstruction amendments, Plessy v. Ferguson (1896) and Jim Crow, and the Great Migration.
How they connect: Week 3 named enslaved Africans as one of the peoples who became part of the United States by force; this week reads the laws that held them and the laws that freed them.
Where we're going next: Week 7, African American Experiences II: Civil Rights and Black Freedom Movements, follows how people won the civil rights laws that answered the system you read here.

Two ideas from Week 2 carry much of this chapter. Racialization is the process of attaching racial meaning to a group, practice, or relationship that was not classified that way before. Institutional discrimination happens when an organization's rules or routine practices produce unequal treatment, whether or not anyone intends it. From Week 3, keep Du Bois (1903), The Souls of Black Folk, which named "the problem of the color-line". This chapter shows you that color-line drawn in law.

A word on names. Black and African American are both in common use. Black is the broader term, and it includes people of recent African and Caribbean origin. In our own voice this course writes "enslaved people", never the older word, because the condition was forced on people; it was not who they were. When a dated court opinion used the older word, we say so and mark it as that document's word.

1. Begin with 1619: slavery in the English colonies

Think about a document in your own wallet that decides what you are allowed to do: a work permit, a lease, a ticket. Each one ties you to a status. Slavery tied a person to the most complete status of all, because it made the person property.

Slavery is a system in which people are held as property and forced to work without pay or freedom.

In the English colonies that became the United States, the story begins on the coast of Virginia. The first ship carrying enslaved Africans to the English colony of Virginia arrived at Old Point Comfort in August 1619, according to the National Park Service. The people aboard had been taken captive from the kingdom of Ndongo, in present-day Angola. They had names, families, languages, and a homeland before they were put on a ship.

Worked example — measuring slavery's span in law. Work out how long slavery lasted from the first arrival in Virginia to its abolition in the Constitution.

The arrival. The first enslaved Africans reached the English colony of Virginia in 1619.
The abolition. The 13th Amendment, which you will read in section 4, was ratified in 1865.
The span. 1865 − 1619 = 246 years.

In words: slavery in what became the United States ran 246 years from the first arrival in Virginia to the 13th Amendment. Generation after generation of families were born into a status they never chose.

Now call back Week 2's racialization. As you read this week's laws and cases, watch a legal status, enslaved or free, citizen or not, being given a racial meaning. The next section shows you the Supreme Court doing exactly that.

Pause and think. Choose one option and answer it in two or three sentences:

(a) The course writes "enslaved people" rather than the older word. What does the choice of a word change about how a reader sees the people in a story?
(b) The people aboard the 1619 ship came from the kingdom of Ndongo. Why might naming a homeland matter in a history that often names only where people were taken?

Misconception check. Students often think slavery in the United States was a short or regional chapter that ended on its own. That is tempting, because many history lessons begin with the Civil War. But slavery ran 246 years from 1619 to 1865, and it ended by constitutional amendment, not by fading away. The cure: anchor the span in its two dated ends, the 1619 arrival and the 1865 amendment.

2. Read the Dred Scott ruling of 1857: who counted as a citizen

Picture a membership card that your friend carries and you are told you can never hold, no matter what you do. The question is not whether you followed the rules. The question is whether the rules ever counted you in.

In 1857 the Supreme Court answered that question about citizenship. In Dred Scott v. Sandford (1857), the Supreme Court held that a Black person whose ancestors were brought to the country and sold as slaves was not a citizen under the Constitution. The phrase "sold as slaves" reflects the Court's own framing of people it treated as property; in our own voice, we say enslaved people. Read the holding as the Court's words, not ours, and notice what it did: it drew citizenship along a racial line, for free Black people as well as for enslaved people.

Worked example — reading the case in the field's order. Walk the reading questions.

What it says. A Black person whose ancestors were brought to the country and sold as slaves was not a citizen under the Constitution.
Who made it. The Supreme Court, the nation's highest court.
Whom it affected. Every Black person in the country whose ancestors had been brought there in slavery, enslaved or free.
What it leaves out. Any path by which such a person could become a citizen; the holding closed the door rather than describing a door.
Where it sits. On the course's citizenship thread (Dataset F), which traces who could become a citizen across groups.

In words: Dred Scott v. Sandford (1857) was a Supreme Court holding that drew citizenship along a racial line, and it stood until the 13th and 14th Amendments overturned it.

That last point is the hinge of the week: it took constitutional amendments to undo the holding, and section 4 counts the years.

Pause and think. Choose one option and answer it in two or three sentences:

(a) What changes for a person when a court says they can never be a citizen, rather than that they are not a citizen yet?
(b) Why might a court's ruling on one man's case end up shaping the lives of millions of people who were never in that courtroom?

Misconception check. Students often think Dred Scott v. Sandford (1857) was only about enslaved people. That is tempting, because the case is remembered as a case about slavery. But the holding reached a Black person whose ancestors were brought to the country in slavery, which included free Black people. The cure: read the holding for whom it named, not only for the issue it is famous for.

3. Read the Emancipation Proclamation of 1863: what it did and did not do

Imagine a store posting a sign: "All sale prices apply at our downtown location." You read it at the suburban branch and expect the sale. The words "all sale prices" sound universal, but the sign's reach is set by its last four words.

The Emancipation Proclamation works the same way. It was an executive proclamation, an order issued by the President, not a law passed by Congress and not an amendment to the Constitution. It took effect in January 1863.

Here is what it did and did not do, according to the National Archives:

What it did. It applied to the states that had seceded from the Union.
What it did not do. It left slavery untouched in the loyal border states and in parts of the Confederacy already under Union control.

Worked example — counting the gap between the proclamation and the amendment. Work out how far apart the proclamation and the amendment sit on the timeline.

The proclamation. The Emancipation Proclamation took effect in 1863.
The amendment. The 13th Amendment came in 1865.
The gap. 1865 − 1863 = 2 years between the proclamation and the amendment.

In words: the 13th Amendment came 2 years after the proclamation took effect; the proclamation left slavery untouched in the loyal border states, and it took a constitutional amendment to end slavery everywhere.

A caveat keeps this reading fair. Its limits do not make the proclamation unimportant; it was a real order with real reach in the states it named. A careful reading says both things: what it did, and what it left for the 13th Amendment to finish.

Pause and think. Choose one option and answer it in two or three sentences:

(a) Think of a rule or announcement that sounded like it covered everyone but turned out to have limits. How did you find the limit?
(b) Why might a President issue a proclamation that covers only some places? Name one question you would ask of the proclamation's record.

Misconception check. Students often think the Emancipation Proclamation freed every enslaved person in 1863. That is tempting, because the name sounds total and the date is famous. But it applied only to states that had seceded, leaving slavery untouched in the loyal border states and in parts of the Confederacy already under Union control. The cure: read the proclamation for where it applied, and give the 13th Amendment (1865) credit for abolition.

4. Read the Reconstruction amendments: the 13th, 14th, and 15th

Think about the house rules posted in your shared apartment. You can change a house rule with a conversation. Changing the lease takes everyone's signature and the landlord's. The Constitution is the lease of the country, and changing it is hard on purpose.

The Reconstruction amendments are the three constitutional amendments ratified after the Civil War. Each one does one job, and you will quote each one exactly:

The 13th Amendment (1865) abolished slavery "except as a punishment for crime". Read that exception carefully; it is part of the text.
The 14th Amendment (1868) opens with its citizenship clause: "All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States". Its equal protection clause forbids a state to deny to any person within its jurisdiction "the equal protection of the laws".
The 15th Amendment (1870) bars denying the vote "on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude".

Worked example — placing the amendments on the timeline. Count the years along the citizenship thread and across the three amendments.

Denial to citizenship. Dred Scott v. Sandford came in 1857 and the 14th Amendment in 1868, so 1868 − 1857 = 11 years from denial of citizenship to citizenship by birth.
Three amendments. The 13th came in 1865 and the 15th in 1870, so all three Reconstruction amendments were ratified within 1870 − 1865 = 5 years.
The thread. On the citizenship thread (Dataset F), 1857 and 1868 sit 11 years apart, and the second undoes the first.

In words: in 11 years, the country moved from a ruling that denied citizenship by race to a clause that makes all persons born here citizens. All three amendments arrived within 5 years, so Congress and the states rewrote the Constitution's promise in one burst.

Notice the word "persons" in both clauses of the 14th Amendment. The citizenship clause covers all persons born or naturalized here, and the equal protection clause protects any person within a state's jurisdiction. That wording is why you will keep meeting it: people of many backgrounds have gone to court under the 14th Amendment, and you will read several of those cases in later weeks.

Pause and think. Choose one option and answer it in two or three sentences:

(a) The 13th Amendment includes the words "except as a punishment for crime". Why might a careful reader underline an exception in a law that abolishes something?
(b) The 14th Amendment says "persons", not one group's name. What difference does that one word make to who can use it?

Misconception check. Students often think the 14th Amendment is only about Black citizens. That is tempting, because it was written in the years right after slavery ended. But its citizenship and equal protection clauses speak of "persons", and they are used by every later group in this course. The cure: read the clause's own words, and expect to meet it again in Weeks 7, 9, and 11.

5. Name Jim Crow and read the Plessy ruling of 1896

Go back to the club with the reading test. The rulebook was equal on paper, and the officers made it unequal in practice. Now imagine a whole region writing rules like that into its laws, and a court telling you the rules were allowed.

Jim Crow is the system of state and local laws and customs that enforced racial segregation and disenfranchisement in the South from the late nineteenth century to the 1960s. Disenfranchisement is taking away or blocking a group's right to vote. After the 15th Amendment, former Confederate states wrote literacy tests (reading or writing tests required before a person could register to vote) and grandfather clauses (rules that excused some would-be voters from new requirements based on who their ancestors were) into their laws to disenfranchise Black voters. The 15th Amendment said the vote could not be denied on account of race; these devices did not need to name race to block Black voters.

Racial violence enforced the system. Lynching, a killing carried out by a mob outside any court or legal process, was used to terrorize Black communities and enforce segregation. This course describes it in words, with no count and no image, out of respect for the people who were killed and their families.

The Supreme Court gave segregation its legal footing in 1896. In Plessy v. Ferguson (1896), the Supreme Court upheld, by a 7–1 vote, a Louisiana law requiring separate railway accommodations by race. That ruling is the source of the separate but equal doctrine: state-required separation by race did not violate the 14th Amendment if the separate facilities were called equal.

Worked example — reading Plessy v. Ferguson (1896) with Week 2. Count the years and name the concept.

The promise. The 14th Amendment's equal protection clause came in 1868.
The ruling. Plessy v. Ferguson came in 1896, so 1896 − 1868 = 28 years after the equal protection clause, the Court upheld state-required separation.
The concept. A state law that assigns seats by race is a rule written by an institution and applied to everyone, so segregation written into law is institutional discrimination.

In words: 28 years after the Constitution promised equal protection, the Supreme Court upheld a law requiring separate railway accommodations by race, and segregation became institutional discrimination written into law.

Compare the scale of the two moments. The 14th Amendment took Congress and the states to ratify; Plessy v. Ferguson took a 7–1 vote of the Court. Seven justices versus one, a ratio of 7 to 1, set the rule that state-required separation could stand.

Pause and think. Choose one option and answer it in two or three sentences:

(a) A literacy test never names race. Explain how a rule can block one group without naming it.
(b) The phrase "separate but equal" contains a promise. What would you need to see, in a record, to check whether the promise was kept?

Misconception check. Students often think segregation was only a matter of custom, something people did out of habit. That is tempting, because customs and laws worked together under Jim Crow. But Plessy v. Ferguson (1896) upheld separation as state law, and the railway law in that case was written, passed, and enforced. The cure: when you read about segregation, ask which part was law and which part was custom, and name both.

6. Follow the Great Migration and read E2

Think about a family move for a job across the country (an illustrative scene). One parent goes first, finds work, and writes home. Months later the rest of the family packs what fits in a few suitcases. If your family has made a move like that, you know it changes a family. When millions of families make them, they change a country.

The Great Migration is the movement of about six million Black people from the South to the North, Midwest, and West from roughly the 1910s to the 1970s, to escape racial violence and Jim Crow and to pursue work and education. The National Archives gives the figure in words, and so does this course; it is an estimate, not a count.

The course's running archive (Dataset A) is an illustrative, unnamed public library's collection. Its excerpts are constructed for this course, identified by role and decade, and never presented as a real person's words. Here is E2: a woman whose family moved north in the Great Migration in the 1940s, interviewed in the 1990s.

"We left in 1943. My father went first, to work in a shipyard, and sent for us that spring. On the train we had to sit in the car set aside for Black passengers until we were out of the South. In the new city nobody told us where to sit, but there were neighborhoods where the bank would not lend to us. My mother said it was different, not finished." (E2, illustrative)

Worked example — reading E2 in the field's order. Walk the reading questions and place the account in time.

What it says. The family left in 1943. The father went first, to work in a shipyard. On the train, the family rode in the car set aside for Black passengers until they were out of the South. In the new city, nobody told them where to sit, but there were neighborhoods where the bank would not lend to them.
Who made it. It is a first-person account recorded about half a century after the move, which tells how one family experienced leaving the Jim Crow South; the dated record tells what the law required.
Whom it affected. A father, a mother, and their children, including the narrator.
What it leaves out. It names no city, no state, and no railway, so its dates are checked against the dated record of Jim Crow and the Great Migration. It also does not say what the father's shipyard job paid or how the family found housing.
Placing it in time. Plessy v. Ferguson came in 1896 and E2's family left in 1943, so 1943 − 1896 = 47 years after the Court upheld separate railway accommodations, E2's family still rode in a car set aside for Black passengers. And 1943 falls inside the Great Migration, which ran from roughly the 1910s to the 1970s.

Worked example — one documented comparison. Set this week's voting story beside Week 5's.

This week. The 15th Amendment (1870) barred denying the vote on account of race, yet former Confederate states wrote literacy tests and grandfather clauses into law.
Week 5. The Indian Citizenship Act of 1924 made Native Americans born in the United States citizens, yet some states barred Native Americans from voting until 1957.
What the comparison shows. In both, a federal right on paper was narrowed by state law in practice.

In words, the reading of E2 in one plain sentence: E2 is an illustrative account of a family's move north in the Great Migration in 1943, in which the train car set aside for Black passengers shows Jim Crow segregation as law 47 years after Plessy v. Ferguson (1896), and "different, not finished" names a new city with fewer posted rules but its own barriers.

One limitation deserves an honest name. E2 is evidence of experience and meaning, and an account recorded half a century later can blur a date or a detail. That is why the reading checks 1943 against the record, and why the bank line is read here only for what it says. Week 7 gives that line its history.

Pause and think. Choose one option and answer it in two or three sentences:

(a) E2's mother called the new city "different, not finished". What is one thing in the account that was different, and one thing that was not finished?
(b) Your own background shapes what you notice in E2. Name one detail you noticed first, and one a reader with a different background might notice first.

Misconception check. Students often think the Great Migration was a move from an unequal South to an equal North. That is tempting, because the train car's separate seating ended at the edge of the South. But E2's family met neighborhoods where the bank would not lend to them, and her mother called the new city "different, not finished". The cure: read the move as a change in the kind of barrier, not as the end of barriers.

Key terms

Slavery — A system in which people are held as property and forced to work without pay or freedom; in the English colonies it began with the arrival of enslaved Africans in Virginia in 1619, and in the United States the 13th Amendment abolished it in 1865. (first used: 1. Begin with 1619: slavery in the English colonies)
Enslaved people — The course's own term for people held in slavery; it names a condition forced on people rather than an identity, and the older word appears only inside a quoted or paraphrased dated document, marked as that document's word. (first used: 1. Begin with 1619: slavery in the English colonies)
Dred Scott v. Sandford — The Supreme Court decision of 1857 holding that a Black person whose ancestors were brought to the country and sold as slaves was not a citizen under the Constitution; the 13th and 14th Amendments overturned it. (first used: 2. Read the Dred Scott ruling of 1857: who counted as a citizen)
Emancipation Proclamation — The executive proclamation that took effect in 1863 and applied only to states that had seceded, leaving slavery untouched in the loyal border states and in parts of the Confederacy already under Union control. (first used: 3. Read the Emancipation Proclamation of 1863: what it did and did not do)
Reconstruction amendments — The three constitutional amendments ratified after the Civil War: the 13th (1865), which abolished slavery except as a punishment for crime; the 14th (1868), which made all persons born or naturalized in the United States citizens and promised equal protection of the laws; and the 15th (1870), which barred denying the vote on account of race. (first used: 4. Read the Reconstruction amendments: the 13th, 14th, and 15th)
Citizenship clause — The opening sentence of the 14th Amendment (1868), which makes all persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to its jurisdiction, citizens of the United States. (first used: 4. Read the Reconstruction amendments: the 13th, 14th, and 15th)
Equal protection clause — The part of the 14th Amendment (1868) that forbids a state to deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws; groups across this course later rely on it in court. (first used: 4. Read the Reconstruction amendments: the 13th, 14th, and 15th)
Jim Crow — The system of state and local laws and customs that enforced racial segregation and disenfranchisement in the South from the late nineteenth century to the 1960s, backed by racial violence including lynching. (first used: 5. Name Jim Crow and read the Plessy ruling of 1896)
Disenfranchisement — Taking away or blocking a group's right to vote; after the 15th Amendment, former Confederate states wrote literacy tests and grandfather clauses into law to disenfranchise Black voters. (first used: 5. Name Jim Crow and read the Plessy ruling of 1896)
Literacy test — A reading or writing test required before a person could register to vote, written into the laws of former Confederate states and used to keep Black citizens from voting. (first used: 5. Name Jim Crow and read the Plessy ruling of 1896)
Grandfather clause — A voting rule written into the laws of former Confederate states that exempted some would-be voters from new voting requirements based on who their ancestors were, so that the requirements fell on Black voters. (first used: 5. Name Jim Crow and read the Plessy ruling of 1896)
Lynching — A killing carried out by a mob outside any court or legal process; under Jim Crow it was a form of racial violence used to terrorize Black communities and enforce segregation. (first used: 5. Name Jim Crow and read the Plessy ruling of 1896)
Plessy v. Ferguson — The Supreme Court decision of 1896 that upheld, by a 7–1 vote, a Louisiana law requiring separate railway accommodations by race, the source of the separate but equal doctrine. (first used: 5. Name Jim Crow and read the Plessy ruling of 1896)
Separate but equal — The doctrine upheld in Plessy v. Ferguson (1896) that state-required separation by race did not violate the 14th Amendment if the separate facilities were called equal. (first used: 5. Name Jim Crow and read the Plessy ruling of 1896)
Great Migration — The movement of about six million Black people from the South to the North, Midwest, and West from roughly the 1910s to the 1970s, to escape racial violence and Jim Crow and to pursue work and education. (first used: 6. Follow the Great Migration and read E2)

Summary

Slavery ran 246 years in what became the United States, from the 1619 arrival in Virginia to the 13th Amendment in 1865.
Dred Scott v. Sandford (1857) denied citizenship along a racial line.
The Emancipation Proclamation (1863) applied only to states that had seceded.
The 13th (1865), 14th (1868), and 15th (1870) Amendments abolished slavery, made citizenship by birth, and barred denying the vote by race.
The 14th Amendment speaks of "persons", so every later group uses it.
Plessy v. Ferguson (1896) upheld segregation as law; Jim Crow added disenfranchisement and violence.
The Great Migration moved about six million Black people out of the South; E2 shows a new city that was "different, not finished".

Check your understanding

Work these before looking at the answers — they are ungraded, and the answers (with reasoning) are at the bottom of the page.

An illustrative town council (not a real one) adopted a rule in its 12th year that required separate waiting rooms at its bus station, and it repealed the rule in its 41st year. For how many years did the rule stand?
A classmate writes, "In 1863 the Emancipation Proclamation freed every enslaved person in the country." Explain what is wrong with the sentence and how to fix it.
An illustrative county (not a real one) requires every new voter to explain a passage of the state constitution to the satisfaction of the county clerk, who picks the passage. The rule never mentions race. Name the device from this chapter it resembles, and explain why a rule that never names race can still be institutional discrimination.
A summary of this week says, "Segregation in the South was a matter of social habit, not of law." Name the misconception and rewrite the sentence.

Answers (worked reasoning — read after attempting)

Subtract the two years: 41 − 12 = 29 years. The rule stood for 29 years. Notice that this is a fresh, illustrative town, not one of the dated events on this week's timeline.
The sentence reads the proclamation for more than it did. The Emancipation Proclamation applied only to states that had seceded, leaving slavery untouched in the loyal border states and in parts of the Confederacy already under Union control; the 13th Amendment (1865) abolished slavery. A fixed sentence: "In 1863 the Emancipation Proclamation applied to the states that had seceded; the 13th Amendment ended slavery everywhere in 1865."
The rule resembles a literacy test, a reading or writing test required before a person could register to vote. Because the clerk picks the passage and judges the explanation, the rule can be applied unequally while reading as equal on paper. It is institutional discrimination because it is a written rule of an institution that can produce unequal treatment whether or not the rule names race.
The sentence reads segregation as only custom. Plessy v. Ferguson (1896) upheld a Louisiana law requiring separate railway accommodations by race, so segregation was written into state law. A fixed sentence: "Segregation in the South was enforced by state and local laws, which Plessy v. Ferguson (1896) upheld, and by custom and violence."

Next up in this module: the lecture, the slide deck, the Readings & Resources page, the lecture tutorial, the practice set, and the quiz — and next week, you read how civil rights laws and the Black freedom movements answered the separate but equal rule you met here.

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