Alvin Ailey Cry
Question 1:
Give an account of the socio-historic context of the work Cry
In the early 17th Century, European settlers in North America turned to African slaves as a cheaper, more plentiful labour source than indentured servants. After 1619, when a Dutch ship brought 20 African ashore at the British colony of Jamestown, Virginia, slavery spread throughout the American colonies. Though it is impossible to give accurate figures, some historians have estimated that 6 to 7 million slaves were imported to the New World during the 18th Century alone, depriving the African continent of some of its healthiest and ablest men and women.
In the 17th and 18th Centuries, black slaves worked predominantly on the tobacco, rice and indigo plantations of the southern coast. After the American Revolution, many colonists began to link the oppression of black slaves to their own oppression by the British ultimately resulting in the call for slavery's abolition.
Slavery itself developed primarily in the South however, many of the Northern businessmen held investments in Southern plantations and benefitted economically in the slave trade. However, this did not deter the abolition of slavery between 1774 and 1804, in all of the northern states. Despite this movement, the industry continued to be vital to the southern states.
From the 1830s to the 1860s the abolition movement gained strength in the northern United States, led by free African's such as Frederick Douglass and white supporters such as William Lloyd Garrison. While many abolitionists based their activism on the belief that slaveholding was a sin, others were more inclined to the non-religious "free-labour" argument, characterised through points such as the regressive nature of slavery, its inefficiency and its pointlessness derived from an economic perspective.
Anti-slavery supporters began at this point helping fugitive slaves escape from southern plantations to the North via a loose network of safe houses as
Give an account of the socio-historic context of the work Cry
In the early 17th Century, European settlers in North America turned to African slaves as a cheaper, more plentiful labour source than indentured servants. After 1619, when a Dutch ship brought 20 African ashore at the British colony of Jamestown, Virginia, slavery spread throughout the American colonies. Though it is impossible to give accurate figures, some historians have estimated that 6 to 7 million slaves were imported to the New World during the 18th Century alone, depriving the African continent of some of its healthiest and ablest men and women.
In the 17th and 18th Centuries, black slaves worked predominantly on the tobacco, rice and indigo plantations of the southern coast. After the American Revolution, many colonists began to link the oppression of black slaves to their own oppression by the British ultimately resulting in the call for slavery's abolition.
Slavery itself developed primarily in the South however, many of the Northern businessmen held investments in Southern plantations and benefitted economically in the slave trade. However, this did not deter the abolition of slavery between 1774 and 1804, in all of the northern states. Despite this movement, the industry continued to be vital to the southern states.
From the 1830s to the 1860s the abolition movement gained strength in the northern United States, led by free African's such as Frederick Douglass and white supporters such as William Lloyd Garrison. While many abolitionists based their activism on the belief that slaveholding was a sin, others were more inclined to the non-religious "free-labour" argument, characterised through points such as the regressive nature of slavery, its inefficiency and its pointlessness derived from an economic perspective.
Anti-slavery supporters began at this point helping fugitive slaves escape from southern plantations to the North via a loose network of safe houses as