RESISTING SLAVERY AND EFFORTS TO SUSTAIN IT

By Leonard E. Colvin

Chief Reporter

New Journal and Guide

On December 1, 1955, Rosa

Parks resisted a bus driver’s order to give up her seat in the colored section to a white patron on a Montgomery Street bus.

Ten months later, in the same city, so did Claudette Colvin; as had Irene Morgan done years earlier on a Greyhound bus in Virginia in 1944.

These individual acts coupled with resistance to economic, political, and social marginalization are common features of the 400 years of Black History in America.

Acts of “resistance” to slavery, Jim Crow segregation, and other forms of oppression are to be highlighted during the 2023 edition of AfricanAmerican History Month in February centered around the one word theme: “Resistance.”

The theme is devised annually by the Association for the Study of AfricanAmerican Life and History (ASALH), founded by Dr. Carter G. Woodson and headquartered in Washington, D.C. “These efforts have been to advocate for a dignified self-determined life in a just democratic society in the United States and beyond the U.S. political jurisdiction,” a statement explaining this year’s theme said on the ASALH website.

It reads, “The 1950s and 1970s in the United States were defined by actions such as sit-ins, boycotts, walkouts, strikes by Black people, and white allies in the fight for justice against discrimination in all sectors of society from employment to education to housing.

“Black people have had to consistently push the United States to live up to its ideals of freedom, liberty, and justice for all,” it continued.

“Systematic oppression has sought to negate much of the dreams of our griots, like Langston Hughes and Zora Neale Hurston, and our freedom fighters, like the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., Septima Clark, and Fannie Lou Hamer fought to realize. Black people have sought ways to nurture and protect Black lives, and for the autonomy of their physical and intellectual bodies through armed resistance, voluntary emigration, nonviolence, education, literature, sports, media, and legislation/ politics. Black-led institutions and affiliations have lobbied, litigated, legislated, protested, and achieved success.” see Yesterday, page 5A

The transatlantic slave trade exported Africans from Senegambia, Upper Guinea, Windward Coast, Gold Coast, Bight of Benin, West Central Africa, and Southeastern Africa. Human cargo was shipped to Portugal, England, Spain, France, the Americas, and the Caribbean, where millions in profits were generated from the labor of enslaved Africans.