Episode Transcript

Sirena Riley as Assata

It is our duty to fight for our freedom. It is our duty to win, we must love each other and support each other. We have nothing to lose, but our chains

Assata

My name is Assata Shakur, and I was born and raised in the United States. I am a descendant of Africans who are kidnapped and brought to the Americas as slaves.

Narrator

Assata's family on her grandmother's side were descendants of Alexander and charity Freeman. Born in 1788, and 1798, respectively, Alexander and charity were what is known as free people of color.

Dr Warren Eugene Milteer Jr

I think the simple definition of a free person of color is a free person who is either of African and or Native American descent.

Narrator

This is Dr. Warren Eugene Milteer, JR. He's an assistant professor of history at the University of North Carolina. And he's the author of North Carolina's free people of color 1715 to 1885. Also, just like a Assata, he's a descendant of free people.

Dr Warren Eugene Milteer Jr

And these people can become free through a variety of different means. Some of them are free by birth. So you could be born free if your mother was free. Also, you could become free as a result of the process of Manumission. So that's where you were enslaved person, and you could either purchase your own freedom, or the person who held you as a slave could give you your freedom as a gift. Or somebody else could pay for use of family members sometimes purchased their relatives out of slavery. So

Narrator

one thing I really wanted to know from Dr. Milteer was what were the rights and privileges that free people of color had

Dr Warren Eugene Milteer Jr

free people of color could of course own property, so they could own personal property like horses and cattle, carts, things like that. They also could own real estate. And so there are some families that own significant amount of property. And up until 1835 freemen of color could vote in North Carolina,

Narrator

in order to understand who the Freeman's were and subsequently, who Assata is and where she came from. I thought it was also important to understand the relationship that free people of color had to the enslaved Africans who they almost lived side by side with.

Dr Warren Eugene Milteer Jr

So I would say the relationship between free people of color, and enslaved people varied across the board, from close family relationships, to certain cases for people of color holding enslaved people, as property. And so often what you would see is free people of color, especially those who had pretty recent ties to slavery, those people who have been manumitted recently, often had close relationships with enslaved people because they still had enslaved relatives in bondage. That's not always the case, but often is the case. Whereas those free people of color who had long histories of freedom, often going back into the colonial period, tended to be more distant, and their relationships with enslaved people. So they might work with them, but are maybe less likely to socialize with them and even less more or less likely to intermarry with enslaved people. But of course, there there are always exceptions to these what might seem as rules.

Narrator

The role free people of color played in the lives of enslaved Africans vary from place to place and from family to family. While some free people call our own slaves, some work for the development of a black community that empower both the enslaved and the free 185 miles south down from where Alexander and Charity lived in a city named Charleston in South Carolina, a freeman named Denmar Vesey was organizing both the enslaved and the free people of color to enact the largest slave rebellion in US history.

Unknown Speaker

So Denmark Vesey anti slavery leader 1757-1821

Narrator

Denmark Vesey was born in 1767 on the Caribbean island of St. Thomas. We It was later purchased by a slave trader by the name of Captain Joseph Vesey . Denmark worked with Joseph's cabin boy for years, and was forced to assist him in buying and selling of enslaved Africans that he purchased on his voyages. After the Revolutionary War, Joseph Vesey decided to retire from the slave trade and brought Denmark to Charleston where he decided to settle. But Charleston was no regular retirement village. It was a major city built almost entirely on the back of the slave trade. The major export was cotton, and Charleston Harbor was their entering point for around 40% of the enslaved Africans bought into the US. After years of serving Captain Joseph in what seemed like an act from God, Denmark Vesey won $1,500 In the city lottery, and at the age of 32, he was able to purchase his own freedom for $600. However, Denmark was not able to purchase the freedom of his wife and children, who were owned by local man that refused to let Denmark purchase their freedom. Denmark could not be satisfied with his personal freedom after realizing it meant nothing if the people he loved most was still in chains. In 1818 he and other methodists broke away from the local white church and founded the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church, which is part of the first independent black denominations in the United States. The church was never approved by local white government, and they attempted on multiple times to shut the church down. Members of the congregation were harassed, arrested and whipped. Using the church as a physical and spiritual base, Denmark, his congregations, and 1000s of free and enslaved Africans organize a rebellion to free to enslaved Africans of Charleston. Inspired by the recent revolution in Haiti, Denmark and his other conspirators were to make a coordinated attack on the Charleston arsenal them on July 14. Once they had acquired the weapons, as was done in the Haitian Revolution, they were to kill every single slave owning man, woman and child. The final part of the plan was to commandeer the slave ships at Charleston Harbor, and so all of those who had been freed to the island of Haiti, where they will be received as free people. In June 1822. One month before the planned rebellion, two slaves named George Wilson and Joe La Roch informed the Charleston authorities of the plot. The Charleston authority set up for armed militia who will patrol the streets for weeks, and through torture and threat of death were able to capture Denmark, Vesey, and 130 other men believed to be involved in the conspiracy. 67 of them were convicted and secret trials were 35 of those including Vesey being convicted and hung. The story of Denmark Vesey's rebellion would travel across the US triggering that ever present fear of a black uprising in the hearts and minds of those benefiting from the system that kept African people enslaved. To others Denmark Vesey's name would be used as a battle cry, as was done by black soldiers in the civil war that would happen almost four years after his execution. And undoubtably the story traveled 185 miles back north to the Carolina coast where 34 year old Alexander Freeman worked as a fisherman with his two sons, Robert, Bruce, and Archie

Unknown Speaker

and we trust that in the future, we will not have to do what our fathers had to do. But if necessary, we have to do what is to be done.

Dr Warren Eugene Milteer Jr

Well, I think that a lot of these free people of color, very much to their status in the pre Civil War period seriously. As much as they might have been persecuted. To some extent, in the pre civil war years. It was nothing like the status of being an enslaved person. And that meant something to them. I think there's also some class issues tied into that you have families that were free that, you know, we're property holders in the pre Civil War period, and they're interested in maintaining that status, and not intermarrying with people who may not have that same access to wealth, which of course, on average, many enslaved people simply don't have that same access to wealth.

Phone

hello, this is a prepaid collect call from

Ryan Vincent Anderson as Sundiata Acoli

Sundiata Acoli.

prison phone

This call is subject to recording and monitoring to Accept Charges press one.

Ryan Vincent Anderson as Sundiata Acoli

By 1850. Approximately 6700 People were found in the nation's newly emerging prison system. Almost none of the prisoners were black. They were more valuable economically outside the prisons. system because there were other means of racial control. During this time, most new Afrikan black men, women and children were already imprisoned for life on plantations as chattel slaves. Accordingly, the Afrikan struggle behind the walls what's carried on primarily behind the walls of slave quarters through conspiracies, revolts, insurrections, arson sabotage, work slowdowns, poisoning of the slave master, self maiming and runaways. If slaves were recaptured, they continued to struggle behind the walls of the local jails, many of which were first built to hold captured runaways. Later, they were also used for local citizens. Even before the end of the Civil War, a new system had been emerging to take the place of the older form of slavery, the convict lease system and thus, shortly after 1850 the imprisonment rate increased, then remained fairly stable with a rate of between 75 and 125 prisoners per 100,000 population. The Afrikan struggle continued primarily behind the slave quarters walls, down through the issuance of the Emancipation Proclamation. This was a declaration issued by President Lincoln on January 1 1863, and during the height of the Civil War, it declared the slaves free only in those states still in rebellion, and had little actual liberating effect on the slaves in question. Their slave masters, still engaged in war against the union simply ignored the declaration and continued to hold their slaves in bondage. Some slave masters kept the declaration secret after the war ended following Lee's surrender on April 9 1865. As a result, news of the Emancipation Proclamation did not reach slaves in Texas until June 19th 1865. This date called Juneteenth is celebrated annually by new Afrikans in Texas and outlying states as black Independence Day.

Narrator

in their lifetime, Alexander and Charity Freeman were able to purchase 99 acres of land near the Atlantic Ocean. In 1876, Alexander and charity son Robert Bruce purchased 2800 more acres of this land and became one that largest landowners in New Hanover County. At some point, the Freeman family married back into the black community, and this land will be passed down for generations. Throughout the 19th century, the Freeman family will become instrumental in the development of an area called Seabreeze. During the development of Seabreeze, the Freeman family would donate land to a local Afrikan Methodist Episcopal Church, they would also donate some land to a school and other members of the family will be teachers, lawyers, leaders in the school community and business owners. At one point, the New Hanover transit company wanted to build a railroad from some of the Freeman's land, and they allowed them to do so under the Express condition that black people in the area will be able to ride the train for free. The Freeman family became a staple in the community and helped build Seabreeze into a safe haven for African Americans.

Narrator

How does knowing about free people of color kind of impact your understanding of where we are today?

Dr Warren Eugene Milteer Jr

Well, I think there are a couple of things that we can get out of it. One is that we can see from the experience of free people of color, that freedom is a spectrum of things that freedom is not one thing. As far as legal status, social status. So you've got you know, freedom for the white elites of the pre Civil War era. And then you have the freedom of free people of color and what that look like. And even within the group of free people of color, there's a variety of positions that they hold wealthy free people of color, who were slaveholders have a much different outlook on life and life experience than those people who were poor. And maybe we were either sharecropping or we're in a forced apprenticeship system or something of that nature. And then I think secondly, that The story of free people of color, I think, tells us something about the situation of people of color today. I think if we've looked closely at the success stories, of people in the 20th century in modern times, that often we could tie some of those successes to the fact that their ancestors were actually people of color. And I think it forces us to ask a question that probably a lot of people don't want to ask, which is, How successful have we been with, I would say, the accomplishments of the reconstruction era, but maybe more importantly, the accomplishments of the civil rights era of the 1960s. And who has actually benefited from those accomplishments, I think, depending on who you're talking to, people would argue whether individuals who are in prison today in the United States, since we have you know, one of the large world's largest prison populations are actually free people in the context of slave versus free, I think most people would say those people are free, although they're obviously not free in the sense that I am where I can sit here and talk to you and not have to go through security, and I'm not behind bars, and I can get paid my wage and all those kinds of things. So you know, we've got people all the way in that position, all the way to, you know, the wealthiest people in the United States, the billionaire class, the political elites in the United States, all those people are free. But we see that, you know, once you can get away with what your rights are, can vary quite a bit. And of course, money can make a huge difference in the situation of so called free people, you know, the poorest people in America are free, but definitely don't have the same opportunities, privileges. And I think even rights that those people who are more wealthy can do. it's one thing to have rights on papers, another thing can be able to actually exercise those rights. We're all supposed to be free. But yeah, we all don't have those rights.

Assata

I am a descendant of Africans who are kidnapped and brought to the Americas as slaves. I spent my early childhood in the racist segregated south