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Black People In A White People's Country By Gary Nash

Decent Essays

The diversity between Americans has always been evident, and not just by the skin tone or religion, but also by their backgrounds, as well as how their lives are like today. Especially in African Americans and those who wanted to change the ways of religion, and the prejudice against them continues to stick, even today.
In the article ‘Black People in a White People’s Country’ by Gary Nash, he explains how slavery gave Africans a low role in America’s society, and how because slavery was allowed in the New World, they were “Socially and legally defined as less than people...”. It wasn’t just the fact that they were enslaved that made people treat them horribly, but also where they came from. In the eyes of a European, Africans were very different, …show more content…

The revivalists were created to go against the changes of the Great Awakening, and one of the biggest leaders was James Davenport. According to Gary Nash in his article ‘The Transformation of European Society’, “Crowds followed Davenport through the towns, singing and clapping so that “They look’d more like a Company of Bacchanalians after a mad Frolick, than sober Christians who had been worshipping God.” as one distressed Boston newspaper complained.” But of course the Great Awakening couldn’t have had the effect it did without the group of ‘rogues and vagabonds’ that came to the New World with the white indentured servants. They had a rage built inside them, and were easily susceptible to new ideas and rebellions. One of the things that fired them up was social equality. For decades Europe had always had one superior ruler that rose above all the classes, but America wanted to change that. They wanted social equality, for one class to not rule over another, for everyone to work and live together as a community with everyone treated the same regardless of their social status. This was promoted by the Great Awakening, making that one of the main reasons the Great Awakening was so popular and had such a great …show more content…

The convicts may have played a big role in the attempts to make the changes the Great Awakening wanted happen, but some of them were unbearable to live with. They still committed petty thefts, and sometimes even got away with murder. All of the crime that occurred in the New World lead to an outbreak, and the government enforced a new law, that all crimes were now a felony, and would lead to the death sentence. The only way too get out of being hanged was to either receive a royal pardon, which was rare to happen, or prove you were worth keeping alive by reading a simple passage from a book, such as the Bible. If the criminal could read it they would be branded on the thumb, and released. Of course this didn’t satisfy many, because a thief of a small amount of coin could be hung while a mass murderer could walk out free, just because he was literate. But of course a majority of the convicts were put into the indenture system, if they made it to the New World alive. The trip there wasn’t only bad for the Africans, it was also unlikely many would survive the voyage to the New World for whites as well. In the article ‘From These Beginnings’ by Page Smith, he tells how a German immigrant described the trip with the indentures. “Under such circumstances, what little civility there might have been collapsed completely.”, According to this German immigrant, there were constant arguments, bad food, malice amongst each other,

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