The Whole Staircase: Films Celebrating 400 Years of African American History & Culture
The Black Atlantic, 1500 - 1800 (2013)
Part of the series The African Americans: Many Rivers to Cross
Presented by the Library. "The Black Atlantic explores the truly global experiences that created the African American people. Beginning a full century before the first 
documented slaves arrived at Jamestown, Virginia, the episode portrays the earliest Africans, both slave and free, who arrived on the North American shores. Soon afterwards, the Trans-Atlantic slave trade would become a vast empire connecting three continents. Through stories of individuals caught in its web, like a 10-year-old girl named Priscilla who was transported from Sierra Leone to South Carolina in the mid-18th century, we trace the emergence of plantation slavery in the American South. The late 18th century saw a global explosion of freedom movements, and The Black Atlantic examines what that Era of Revolutions--American, French and Haitian--would mean for African Americans, and for slavery in America." - PBS
Running Time: 57 minutes
Licensed through Films on Demand
Screening Dates and Locations
January 14, 2019 The Whole Staircase Film Series - The Black Atlantic, 1500 - 1800
Time: 1:00 - 3:00
January 14, 2019 The Whole Staircase Film Series - The Black Atlantic, 1500 - 1800
Time: 1:00 - 3:00
All are welcome!
January 16, 2019 The Whole Staircase Film Series - The Black Atlantic, 1500 - 1800
Time: 11:00 - 1:00
All are welcome!
June 20, 2019 The Whole Staircase Film Series - The Black Atlantic, 1500 - 1800
Time: 5:30 p.m.
An informal discussion with members of The Turning Table's Race Issues Study Circle will be held after the film.
Resources for Further Exploration - The Black Atlantic, 1500-1800
Online Resources
Who Was the First African American? - Henry Louis Gates, Jr. writes about Juan Garrido, a conquistador who landed in Florida in 1513 and was "the first documented black person to arrive in this country."
"Researchers seek fuller picture of first Africans in America" - Article about the Africans who arrived at Point Comfort and the work of their descendants for recognition.
Virginia's First Africans - Provides details about the 1619 arrival at Point Comfort of the first Africans to be sold into slavery in America.
The African American Migration Story - "From the transatlantic slave trade to today's New Great Migration, learn about the major African-American migrations and how those movements changed the course of American history."
Books and eBooks at the SJR State Library
Books may be checked out by community patrons as well as SJR State students faculty and staff. If a title is located at another campus, the book may be sent to another campus upon request.
Please note: eBooks are only accessible to currently registered SJR State students, faculty, and staff via MySJRstate due to licensing restrictions.
Slaves in the Family by Call Number: SAC: F279.C453A2 1999ISBN: 9780345431059Publication Date: 1998-12-29"Journalist Ball confronts the legacy of his family's slave-owning past, uncovering the story of the people, both black and white, who lived and worked on the Balls' South Carolina plantations. It is an unprecedented family record that reveals how the painful legacy of slavery continues to endure in America's collective memory and experience. Ball, a descendant of one of the largest slave-owning families in the South, discovered that his ancestors owned 25 plantations, worked by nearly 4,000 slaves. Through meticulous research and by interviewing scattered relatives, Ball contacted some 100,000 African-Americans who are all descendants of Ball slaves. In intimate conversations with them, he garnered information, hard words, and devastating family stories of precisely what it means to be enslaved. He found that the family plantation owners were far from benevolent patriarchs; instead there is a dark history of exploitation, interbreeding, and extreme violence." - publisher's description
Exchanging Our Country Marks: the transformation of African identities in the colonial and antebellum South by Call Number: eBook - - Access is limited to current MySJRstate account holdersISBN: 9780807823873Publication Date: 1998-03-30"This book examines the intersection of African cultures in America that slavery produced. The author proposes that, over time, the diversity of African ethnicities in America melded into a common race identity." - PBS
In Hope of Liberty by Call Number: eBook - Access is limited to current MySJRstate account holdersISBN: 1423760190Publication Date: 1997-01-01"Covering the colonial period to the Civil War and spanning all of the northern United States, this text documents the antebellum northern black experience. In examining churches, schools, music, living arrangements, occupations, even the underground railroad, it demonstrates the central role of the black community in successfully managing the tensions born of assimilation and cultural difference. In the process, it shows the extensive national contributions of northern blacks." - publisher's description- American Slavery by Call Number: SAC: E441 .K64 1993ISBN: 080902568XPublication Date: 1993-06-01"Peter Kolchin has written a concise, engaging overview of American slavery. His unusually broad chronological perspective begins with the colonial years and ranges through emancipation and the aftermath of the Civil War - exploring the ways in which slavery evolved and changed over two and a half centuries." "Kolchin takes a broad geographical perspective as well, putting American slavery in the context of slavery elsewhere. Slavery emerged in the American colonies as part of a general trend toward use of forced labor on the periphery of an expanding Europe. In the United States the "peculiar institution" differed in important ways from slavery in other countries." "Not least, American Slavery pays equal attention to slaves and their masters, focusing on the dynamic relationship between them and the centrality of that relationship to the Old South." "Slavery - its history, development, and the issues it raised over the centuries - remains at the core of the American experience. Peter Kolchin's incisive synthesis fills a major gap in that experience for the general reader and for historians, who will find it both stimulating and appealing." - publisher's marketing
American Slavery, American Freedom by Call Number: PAC: E445.V8 M67 2003ISBN: 9780393324945Publication Date: 2003-10-17"The men who came together to found the independent United States either held slaves or were willing to join hands with those who did. George Washington, hero of the Revolution, was the master of several hundred slaves. Thomas Jefferson, author of the Declaration of Independence, owned more than 200 men, women, and children while eloquently defending the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. In this classic work, originally published in 1976, through a meticulous history of Virginia from its earliest settlement through the seventeenth century boom in tobacco, the gradual replacement of servitude with slavery, and the rise of republican ideology, historian Morgan reveals the deep and interlocking relationship between these seemingly contradictory ideas." publisher's description- Slavery and the Making of America by Call Number: eBook - Access is limited to current MySJRstate account holdersISBN: 1429440287"The history of slavery is central to understanding the history of the United States. Slavery and the Making of America offers a richly illustrated, vividly written history that illuminates the human side of this inhumane institution, presenting it largely through stories of the slaves themselves. Readers will discover a wide ranging and sharply nuanced look at American slavery, from the first Africans brought to British colonies in the early seventeenth century to the end of Reconstruction. The authors document the horrors of slavery, particularly in the deep South, and describe the valiant struggles to escape bondage, from dramatic tales of slaves such as William and Ellen Craft to Dred Scott's doomed attempt to win his freedom through the Supreme Court. We see how slavery set our nation on the road of violence, from bloody riots that broke out in American cities over fugitive slaves, to the cataclysm of the Civil War. Along the way, readers meet such individuals as "Black Sam" Fraunces, a West Indian mulatto who owned the Queen's Head Tavern in New York City, a key meeting place for revolutionaries in the 1760s and 1770s. Indeed, the book is filled with stories of remarkable African Americans, from Sergeant William H. Carney, who won the Congressional Medal of Honor for his bravery at the crucial assault on Fort Wagner during the Civil War, to Benjamin "Pap" Singleton, a former slave who led freed African Americans to a new life on the American frontier. With more than one hundred illustrations, Slavery and the Making of America is a gripping account of the struggles of African Americans against the iniquity of slavery." - publisher's description
Black Majority by Call Number: PAC: E445.S7W66 1996ISBN: 0393314820Publication Date: 1996-04-17"This book represents an early attempt to revise the idea that slavery in America was a homogenous and static system. Relying heavily on primary sources, the text traces the history of slavery in South Carolina, beginning in the year of the colony's founding and ending in the mid-18th century, by which time blacks outnumbered whites in the region." - PBS
Masters, Slaves, and Subjects by Call Number: OPC: E445.S7O46 1998ISBN: 0801434882Publication Date: 1998-06-01"Olwell picks up where Wood's study of South Carolina slavery, BLACK MAJORITY, leaves off. The text examines relationships and interactions between slaves and their masters in the context of British Imperialism." - PBS- The Negro in the American Revolution by Call Number: PAC: E269.N3 Q3 1973 Also available as an eBook for SJR State students, faculty & staff. Use link below.ISBN: 0393006743Publication Date: 1973-01-01"This text is a foundational study of African-American contributions to the colonial victory in the Revolutionary war." - PBS
Stolen Childhood by Call Number: eBook - Access is limited to current MySJRstate account holdersISBN: 0253001072Publication Date: 2011-06-29"This text reveals how African-American parents and their children demonstrated strength and resilience in the face of a system that denied black children a real childhood. The book focuses on the experiences of enslaved youth in the context of their family, work, play, leisure, education, and religion." - PBS
Black over White by Call Number: PAC: E185.93.S7 H75 1979ISBN: 0252007751Publication Date: 1979-08-01"This prize-winning volume in the BLACKS IN THE NEW WORLD series looks at the individual African-American men who participated in the reconstruction government. The text considers the degree of influence black politicians held and the methods these men employed to overcome opposition and gain power within the system." - PBS- "I, Too, Am America" by Call Number: eBook - Access is limited to current MySJRstate account holdersISBN: 9780585120959Publication Date: 1999-01-01"This collection of essays emerges from the belief that an understanding of colonial America must encompass both the European and African experience. The authors employ archaeological discoveries to initiate discussion of issues ranging from race and gender to class and power." - PBS
- Slave Culture by Call Number: eBook - Access is limited to current MySJRstate account holdersISBN: 1423736362Publication Date: 1988-01-01"This text suggests that Africa was the chief influence on slave consciousness and practices and attempts to explain how a diversity of African ethnicities generated a single culture in America. The book looks at religious ritual, dance, song, and other forms of cultural expression.
" - PBS 
Generations of Captivity by Call Number: SAC: E441 .B47 2003ISBN: 9780674010611Publication Date: 2003-03-25"In this book Ira Berlin traces the history of African-American slavery in the United States from its beginnings in the seventeenth century to its demise nearly three hundred years later. Most Americans, black and white, have a singular vision of slavery, one fixed in the mid-nineteenth century when most American slaves grew cotton, resided in the deep South, and subscribed to Christianity. Here, however, Berlin offers a major reinterpretation in which slaves and their owners continually renegotiated the terms of captivity. Slavery was thus made and remade by successive generations of Africans and African Americans who lived through settlement and adaptation, plantation life, economic transformations, revolution, forced migration, war, and ultimately, emancipation. Berlin's understanding of the processes that continually transformed the lives of slaves makes Generations of captivity essential reading for anyone interested in the evolution of antebellum America. Connecting the "Charter Generation" to the development of Atlantic society in the seventeenth century, the "Plantation Generation" to the reconstruction of colonial society in the eighteenth century, the "Revolutionary Generation" to the Age of Revolutions, and the "Migration Generation" to American expansionism in the nineteenth century, Berlin integrates the history of slavery into the larger story of American life. He demonstrates how enslaved black people, by adapting to changing circumstances, prepared for the moment when they could seize liberty and declare themselves the "Freedom Generation." This epic story provides a rich understanding of the experience of African-American slaves, an experience that continues to mobilize American thought and passions today." - publisher's description
Working Cures by Call Number: eBook - Access is limited to current MySJRstate account holdersISBN: 9780807898925Publication Date: 2000-11-09"An exploration of black health under slavery showing how herbalism, conjuring, midwifery and other African American healing practices became arts of resistance in the antebellum South and invoked conflicts between the slave doctors and the whites who attempted to supervise their work." - publisher's description
Slave Religion by Call Number: eBook - Access is limited to current MySJRstate account holdersISBN: 9780195174120Publication Date: 2004-10-07"This text is essential for studying the development of African American religion in the pre-Civil War period." - PBS
Runaway Slaves by Call Number: SAC: E447 .F7 1999ISBN: 0195084497Publication Date: 1999-04-29"In this book, John Hope Franklin and Loren Schweninger demonstrate that, contrary to popular belief, significant numbers of slaves did in fact frequently rebel against their masters and struggle to attain their freedom. By surveying a wealth of documents, such as planters' records, petitions to county courts and state legislatures, and local newspapers, this book shows how slaves resisted; when, where, and how they escaped; where they fled to; how long they remained in hiding; and how they survived away from the plantation. Of equal importance, it examines the reactions of the white slaveholding class, revealing how they marshaled considerable effort to prevent runaways, meted out severe punishments, and established patrols to hunt down escaped slaves." "Reflecting a lifetime of thought by our leading authority in African American history, this book provides the key to truly understanding the relationship between slaveholders and the runaways who challenged the system - illuminating as never before the true nature of the South's "most peculiar institution." - publisher's description
Water from the Rock by Call Number: OPC: E269.N3F74 1991ISBN: 0691006261Publication Date: 1993-01-31"This work complicates the picture of black involvement in the Revolutionary War by suggesting that it was actually a three-sided conflict in which blacks used the opportunity presented by the Loyalist-Patriot rift to attain freedom." - PBS
Holy Warriors by Call Number: PAC: E446.S83 1996ISBN: 080901596XPublication Date: 1997-01-15"This text surveys the most significant contributions to the study of abolition in America. It explores the different types of abolitionists, examines the relationships between black and white abolitionists, and investigates the impact abolition had on the fate of the slave system." - PBS
Reconstruction by Call Number: OPC: E668.F66 1988 and PAC: Civil War Collection E668.F66 1988ISBN: 0060158514Publication Date: 1988-05-01"Foner's classic, comprehensive study is based on extensive use of archival and secondary sources. This text redefined previous treatments of what black and white Americans experienced during Reconstruction." - PBS
Celebration • Education • Reflection
H.R.1242/Public Law 115-102, the 400 Years of African American History Commission Act, establishes 2019 as a year of "commemoration of the 400th anniversary of the arrival of Africans in the English colonies, at Point Comfort, Virginia, in 1619." The commemoration is intended “to recognize and highlight the resilience and contributions of African-Americans since 1619; to acknowledge the impact that slavery and laws that enforced racial discrimination had on the United States; and to educate the public about the arrival of Africans in the United States; and the contributions of African-Americans to the United States.” In recognition of this commemoration and with the Act serving as a guide, the SJR State Library has organized a year-long series of events that will provide educational experiences and resources to students and the community that celebrate the history and culture of African Americans.
Site created and maintained by Dr. Christina Will. Pages will be added and maintained throughout 2019.
Maintenance will cease at the end of 2019 but this site will remain accessible.