Encyclopedia

This interactive encyclopedia offers teachers and students access to terms, people, and events related to the history of Slavery in America. Many entries include reference material and some of the biographies on prominent figures contain suggestions for teaching as well as links to related sections of this site. The encyclopedia will continue to grow throughout the course of this project.

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369th Infantry Division of the United States Army: An African-American division that fought in France in World War I (WWI) and won the prized Croix de Guerre--the only American unit to be so honored. These soldiers were called "Hell Fighters" by their French commanders in recognition of their valor. Four National Guard units also fought with the French during the war, but only the Illinois Guard had African-American units. These units were loaned to the French principally because U. S. Army officials did not wish to send white soldiers. American authorities warned French officers that the black soldiers were potential rapists, who had to be kept away from civilian populations. Of the 380,000 black men serving in WWI, only 42,000 served in combat units. The rest were relegated to latrine and cooking duty and general cleaning and hauling work. When black soldiers returned home after the war, they were met with rage and anger from white Americans. Seventy African Americans were lynched in 1919, and ten of them were soldiers--some were killed in their uniforms. Many of these returning soldiers were so disgusted with the Jim Crow South that they moved to mid-western and eastern cities and towns in the decade following the war.

A Light in August: [1932] A novel by William Faulkner, tells the story of a mulatto man (Joe Christmas) who is uncertain of his racial identity. Faulkner uses the character of Christmas to illustrate the extreme agony of mixed-race individuals in the Jim Crow South. When Christmas steps from one racial role to the other, he confronts the full horror of Jim Crow and the wrath of a southern mob determined to kill him as an example to blacks in the small-town South.

Abbott, Grace: (1878-1939) The daughter of an ardent feminist and fighter for racial justice, Grace Abbott became sensitized to social inequities at an early age. After teaching for a period in her hometown of Grand Island, Nebraska, Grace Abbott arrived in Chicago in 1907 to begin doctoral studies in political science and constitutional history at the University of Chicago. She soon became acquainted with the Jane Addams Hull House and began living there in 1908. At the same time she became director of the Immigrant's Protective League, organized to protect and assist recent immigrants. While also teaching at the University of Chicago, Abbott championed state legislation to protect immigrants in the banks and the courts. In 1917, President Woodrow Wilson appointed Abbott Director of the Industrial Division of the Children's Bureau at the U.S. Department of Labor. As Director, she oversaw the enforcement of the country's first child labor laws passed by Congress in 1916. She resigned in 1918 after the Keating-Owen Act limiting the employment of children was declared unconstitutional. But by 1921 she was back in Washington when President Warren G. Harding appointed her Chief of the U.S. Children's Bureau, a post she held until 1934. During her tenure she pushed for passage of the Sheppard-Towner Act, which provided federal grants-in-aid for social welfare purposes, also declared unconstitutional in 1922. A proponent of research and social statistics for the purpose of policy making, Abbott launched over 100 such investigations of maternal mortality, children in agriculture, and youth and crime. One of Abbott's final contributions came in assisting President Franklin Roosevelt draft the Social Security Act in 1935. She died in Chicago in 1939.

Abbott, Robert: (1870-1940) Editor and founder of the Chicago Defender, the largest black newspaper in America from the 1920s through the 1950s. Born on St. Simons Island off the Georgia coast, he attended Hampton Institute in Virginia and earned a law degree from Kent Law School in Chicago in 1899. Abbott burst onto the civil rights scene after befriending Ida B. Wells and founding the Chicago Defender in 1905. After WWI, his newspaper publicized, in red ink, the lynchings and atrocities committed against African Americans. When jobs opened up to southern blacks in northern war industries during WWI, Abbott championed black migration to Chicago and other northern cities, which he referred to as the "Great Northern Drive." In 1929, his newspaper circulated over 250,000 copies, and was read all over the South.

Abernathy, Ralph: (1926-1990) A Baptist minister and American civil rights leader who helped Martin Luther King, Jr. organize the Montgomery bus boycott in 1955. After King's death he became president of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), and was an outspoken advocate of nonviolence as a means to social justice.

Adams-Onis Treaty: Following Andrew Jackson's seizure of Pensacola during the First Seminole War (1817-1818), the Spanish Government concluded it was necessary to give up Florida. The Adams-Onís Treaty was signed in Washington, DC, on February 22, 1819. Spain gave up claims to West Florida, while the United States gave up claims to Texas. Florida ceded East Florida to the United States, in effect for $five million. (U.S. citizens had lodged $five million worth of claims against Spain, and the U.S. Government assumed the burden for Spain.) The western boundary of the Louisiana Purchase was established from the mouth of the Sabine River on the Gulf of Mexico, up the Red and Arkansas Rivers to the 42nd Parallel (due west to the Pacific). Because of Spanish delay, the U.S. Senate ratified the treaty twice, the final time on February 19, 1821. The treaty went into effect upon final exchange between the U.S. and Spain three days later, on February 22, 1821.

Addams, Jane: (1860-1935) Born in Cedarville, Illinois, Addams's mother died when she was only 3, leaving her to be raised by her father. She graduated from Rockford Female Seminary in 1881 and began studies at the Women's Medical College in Philadelphia, but was forced to quit after undergoing a serious spinal operation. Thereafter she became one of the most important fighters for social reform, rejecting marriage and motherhood in favor of working with the poor. Along with a college friend, Ellen Starr, Addams moved in 1889 into an old mansion in the poorest district of Chicago. The mansion, Hall House, became her home for the rest of her life and the center of a grand experiment in social action and research--a model for the settlement house movement in American. Among the founding members of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People in 1909, she also worked in advocacy of women's rights, becoming president of the National American Women's Suffrage Association (1911-14) and chairperson of the Women's Peace Party (1915). A leader in the progressive movement, she seconded the nomination of Theodore Roosevelt for president on the Progressive Party ticket in 1912. One of the nation's most outspoken opponents of America's entry into WWI, Adams was vilified for her peace activities. After the armistice she helped organize the International League for Peace and Freedom, serving as its president until her death. Tireless in her efforts to help the downtrodden and to stand up for American freedoms, she also helped found the American Civil Liberties Union in 1920. By the end of the 1920s, Addams had become one of the nation's most respected citizens, and she was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1931. She died on May 21, 1935.

African Diaspora: This comes from the Greek word for dispersion, and is traditionally associated with the scattering of Jews from Israel. More recently it refers to the dispersal of Africans throughout the world. It is a political term popularized by black nationalists in the 1960s and 1970s to call attention to the continued unity of peoples of African heritage outside of the African continent. Their common African heritage as well as their common suffering as a displaced people holds the peoples of the African Diaspora together. The principal force in the dispersion of Africans was the transatlantic slave trade, followed by the disrupting effects of wars, commercial activities, and the new global economy of modern times. Since the 1980s, much of the dispersion involves the migration of Africans in search of opportunities in Western Europe, the United States, the Persian Gulf, and Asia. It is estimated that the African Diaspora exceeded 170 million people in the year 2000, with large concentrations of population in the Americas. For example, over 35 million blacks live in the United States. Another 36 million live in the Caribbean; and over 70 million blacks or people of mixed African/European/American heritage live in modern day Brazil.

African-American Churches: Places of refuge, as viewed by black worshippers, independent of the white world in the Jim Crow era. Most black churches were fundamentalist in perspective, emphasizing a literal reading of the Bible and energetic worship. Typically, most black churches cared for the poor amongst their members with special charity drives and "after collections." African-American church members expected ministers and deacons to complement their spiritual leadership with community and often, political leadership, thus explaining the significant number of ministers among the African-American leaders of the Civil Rights Movement. The largest black institution in the United States was the National Baptist Convention, which had more than two million members in 1900. The African Methodist Episcopal (A.M.E.) church was the second largest, with half a million members. Holiness and Pentecostal sects, which emphasized one's personal relationship with the Holy Spirit, grew rapidly in the post-WWI era.

African-American Colleges and Universities: Institutions of higher education established for African Americans--many were established from Reconstruction to 1900, including Howard University in Washington, D. C., Fisk University, Atlanta University, Clark University, Alcorn State University, Bethune-Cookman College, Hampton Institute, Richmond Theological Seminary, Tuskegee Institute, and Langston University in Oklahoma. Most of these schools were teachers' colleges and schools of agriculture. But, they also offered other courses in the sciences and the liberal arts. In general, the so-called "Tuskegee Model" of industrial education endorsed by Booker T. Washington competed with a more academic-oriented curriculum for blacks at the turn of the century. W.E.B. Du Bois, one of the critics of the industrial model within the African-American community, argued that it failed to educate blacks as leaders because the industrial model did not educate them in the liberal arts, sciences, and professional disciplines. For more information about individual colleges, see the map.

Alabama A&M University: An educational institution founded in 1875 as the Colored Normal School at Huntsville by former slave William Hooper Councill. With 61 students, two teachers, and $1,000 a year from the Alabama State Legislature, Councill built his school into a training center for teachers. Legend has it that the university's bell tower is situated on the precise spot where Councill was sold into slavery and where he vowed to return to make the land a productive place for his people. In 1891, Councill's school received Land Grant funds and expanded its training to include agriculture and mechanics. It became Alabama Agricultural and Mechanical University in 1969 and now boasts Alabama's oldest Bachelor of Arts program in computer science, along with liberal arts, city planning, business, and several graduate programs.

Alabama State University: One of the first institutions of higher learning founded by African Americans in the United States, it was originally established in 1867as Lincoln Normal School in Marion, Alabama. In 1887, the school moved to Montgomery after the State Legislature authorized the establishment of the Alabama Colored People's University, thereby replacing the Lincoln School. In spite of significant opposition from hostile corners, the university managed to survive numerous legal hurdles to its existence thanks to the financial contributions of its black population. In 1889, the school built its first permanent building. During the following decades, Alabama State grew steadily, adding academic departments, purchasing land, and constructing dormitories and other campus facilities, becoming State Teachers College (1929), Alabama State College for Negroes (1948), Alabama State College (1954), and, finally, Alabama State University (1969). The school currently has 5,666 students. Elementary education, computer information systems, and criminal justice rank as the most popular majors.

Albany State University: A school established as the Albany Bible and Manual Training Institute in 1903 by private religious organizations in order to train young blacks in southwest Georgia. By 1917, it was a State-supported two-year school called the Georgia Normal and Agricultural College; in 1943, it grew into a four-year institution and was renamed Albany State College. It became Albany State University in 1969. Currently, the school has over 3,000 enrolled students and offers undergraduate degrees in biology, criminal justice, computer science, education management, and nursing, as well as six advanced degrees.

Alcorn State University: Institution of higher learning established after the Civil War on property formerly belonging to Oakland College that had been abandoned when its students left to enlist for the Confederacy. It was bought and backed annually with $50,000 by the State of Mississippi and renamed Alcorn University in honor of its governor, James L. Alcorn. Senator Hiram R. Revels, one of the first two blacks elected to the U. S. Senate, left Congress to be Alcorn's first president in 1871, presiding over eight faculty and 179 students. As a Land Grant college, the school also received money from by selling 30,000 acres of land to develop its agricultural and mechanical curriculum. Correspondingly, it changed its name to Alcorn Agricultural and Mechanical College. Originally designed to train black men, Alcorn became co-educational in 1903. Over the next 60 years, Alcorn developed and diversified its curriculum to include liberal arts, teacher education, and nursing. Alcorn A&M became Alcorn State University in 1974.

Allen University: A liberal arts school founded by the African Methodist Episcopal Church in 1870. Allen University currently enrolls 425 students in its co-educational liberal arts curriculum.

American Civil Liberties Union: Founded in 1920 as a national, nonprofit, non-partisan legal organization, the ACLU was dedicated to defending the constitutional rights of Americans. Its first president was Roger Baldwin, its founder, who served as president for 30 years. Its early members included such progressives as Norman Thomas, Jane Addams, Lillian Wald, Felix Frankfurter, Oswald Garrison Villard, Paul Kellogg, Clarence Darrow, John Dewey, Charles Beard, Helen Keller, and Upton Sinclair. It gained much notoriety representing those opposed to World War I, labor agitators, socialists and communists, anarchists, political radicals, and members of nonconformist religious groups. The organization was especially active defending the entire range of civil rights guaranteed in state and federal constitutions, including: First Amendment rights--such as free speech, assemblage, and press; equal protection of the law regardless of race, sex, religion, national origin, sexual orientation, age, sexual orientation, or physical handicap; the due process of law; free speech; and the right of privacy. They were directly involved in almost every major civil liberty case in American courts, including the Scopes Monkey trial (1925) and Brown v. Board of Education (1954).

American Missionary Association: (1863-1876) A northern abolitionist and Congregationalist organization that sent teachers, including African Americans, into the former Confederate states to instruct both soldiers and civilians. Many of them were prominent abolitionists who worked to educate former slaves in plantation schools and rural colleges. Working with the Freedmen's Bureau, the Association helped establish several black colleges: Berea in Kentucky, Fisk in Tennessee, Hampton in Virginia, Tougaloo in Alabama, and Avery in South Carolina.

American Missionary Society: Organization designed to bring equality and privileges of citizenship to blacks during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. It was one of the most significant organizations dedicated to the training of blacks after emancipation. The AMA traces its roots to a committee in 1839 organized to defend the slaves who mutinied aboard the Amistad. The AMA was incorporated, along with two other abolitionist groups, in 1846 with the goal of returning emancipated slaves to Africa and establishing missions for these freed slaves on the continent of their ancestors. During the late antebellum and early Reconstruction periods the AMA turned its attention to abolitionism, educational endeavors for free blacks, and then missionary efforts in the South and in Africa. Ten Historic Black Colleges and Universities trace their origins to the American Missionary Society.

Anderson, Violette Neatley: (1882-1937) In 1920, British émigré Violette Anderson became the first African-American woman admitted to the Illinois Bar. Born in London, England, to a German mother and West Indian father, Anderson moved to Chicago with her family when she was a child and received her education there. After clerking in a law office, she started her own successful stenography business but abandoned it to attend Chicago Law School in 1917. When she received her law degree in 1920, she was the first woman and the first black woman to graduate from any law school in Illinois. Thereafter Anderson continued to make history as she became the first African-American woman to practice law in the U.S. District Court-Eastern Division, the first woman city prosecutor in the city of Chicago, and on January 29, 1926, the first African-American woman to argue in front of the United States Supreme Court. Throughout her life she was active in Chicago philanthropic organizations such as the Friendly Big Sister League, the League of Women Voters, and Zeta Phi Beta Sorority. Through her club membership she lobbied congressmen for the passage of the 1936 Bankhead-Jones Bill designed to help tenant farmers escape destitution by providing long-term, low interest loans. The bill was passed by Congress in 1937. Anderson died from colon cancer in 1937 in Chicago.

Arkansas Baptist College: A private school originally founded as the Minister's Institute by the Arkansas Baptist Consolidated Convention in 1884. Arkansas Baptist has remained a private institution centered on the Christian and spiritual development of its students. It currently enrolls 200 students. The college shares resources with nearby historically black college, Philander College, also located in Little Rock, Arkansas.

Armstrong, Louis: (1900-1971) The most influential of all jazz musicians, Armstrong was born and raised in New Orleans. He came from a poor family and was sent to reform school at the age of twelve. Armstrong learned to play the coronet by hanging around Jazz clubs and watching musicians play. His amazing technical abilities and quick inventive musical mind influenced the development of jazz and its modern-day character.

Armstrong, Samuel Chapman: (1839-1893) The Hawaiian-born son of missionary parents rose to the rank of major general in the Union Army during the Civil War. Later he was appointed an agent of the Freedmen's Bureau in Virginia, where he pioneered his philosophy of education for the recently emancipated black people of the South. Armstrong is considered by some to be a proponent of pragmatic accommodationism, the educating of freed slaves in "practical education" so that they could resume a subservient and non-threatening role in society. Armstrong founded, with the sponsorship of the American Missionary Society, the Hampton Normal and Agricultural Institute in 1868, and over the next generation the school educated hundreds of black teachers who in taught thousands of young African-American students all over the South. Armstrong's most illustrious student was Booker T. Washington, who went on to head Tuskegee Institute and promote the so-called "Hampton Idea" of industrial education for blacks. The nation's leading philanthropists, businessmen, and politicians supported this educational approach. In later years, Armstrong championed the failed cause of uniting American-Indians and emancipated slaves within a white dominated society.

Association for the Study of Negro Life and History: Founded in Chicago in 1915 by Charles G. Woodson to promote African-American history and to counteract the misrepresentation of African Americans in American society. Woodson guided the Association with the belief that serious scholarly research, the preservation of manuscripts, the publication of books and essays, and the teaching of African American history would give credence to the contributions of blacks, thus gaining some measure of respect from white Americans. From 1920 to 1940, white foundations withheld support from the Association, forcing Woodson to turn to the black community for its funding. Among its most noted successes was its promotion of Black History Week and Black History Month. It also publishes The Journal of Negro History, the Negro history Bulletin, and black history textbooks.

Bacon's Rebellion: In 1676, Nathaniel Bacon, an English aristocrat who had immigrated to Virginia, led an armed rebellion against the unresponsive government in Virginia, achieving heroic status. Bacon led an army of 500 men from the ranks of backcountry planters, farmers, formerly indentured servants, and even freed blacks to attack Indians who had raided their plantations and farms. The government at Jamestown considered the army a rabble mob and declared Bacon a traitor. Bacon then marched on the colonial seat of government in Jamestown, burning it to the ground and forcing the Governor to flee across the Chesapeake Bay to the Eastern Shore. Before a British naval squadron arrived, Bacon came down with a serious attack of dysentery and died. British soldiers restored order in the colony and the rebellion ended with little change in the prevailing political system. Bacon's appeal to enslaved blacks to join his cause struck fear into the hearts of tidewater planters. His actions looked to them as a biracial alliance of the lower classes against the propertied elite. To continue to use white indentured servants who could obtain guns as free men and women appeared to threaten a social order that privileged the upper-class elite. Over the next 25 years, planters switched almost completely to enslaved Africans in hopes of uniting all whites into a race-based alliance between the wealthy planters and poorer whites. Historians view Bacon's Rebellion as a major turning point in the history of slavery in that white southerners thereafter defined freedom and equality in terms of race rather than class. To be free and white was the promise of American equality, and all whites thereafter shared a common bond in their whiteness that superseded any class differences.

Bahamas: The Bahamas are a chain of dozens of islands located about 50 miles off the east coast of Florida, extending over 760 miles from North to South. On October 12, 1492, Christopher Columbus made his first landfall in the New World on one of the islands of the Bahamas, which he named San Salvador. During the Spanish colonial period, slave raiders and disease carried off the entire native Arawak population of the islands. The English colonized the uninhabited islands beginning with Eleuthera in 1646 and New Providence in 1656. The Spanish and French competed with the English for control of the islands. Piracy thrived until Woodes Rogers became royal governor in 1718. He and his troops executed eight pirates and forced the surrender of 1,000 others. Although briefly captured by the U.S. during the American Revolution, the Bahamas remained a British colony and provided sanctuary to fleeing Loyalists. The United Kingdom Emancipation Act took force on August 1, 1834, thereby ending slavery in the Bahamas. Fugitive Black Seminole and slaves of U.S. Florida braved the perils of the Atlantic for the promise of a free life in the Bahamas.

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