Encyclopedia

This interactive encyclopedia offers teachers and students access to terms, people, and events related to the history of Jim Crow. Many entries include reference material and some of the biographies on prominent figures contain suggestions for teaching as well as links to related sections of this site. The encyclopedia will continue to grow throughout the course of this project.

Indentured Servants: Impoverished men and women in Spain, Portugal, France, England, and the Germanic Rhineland signed contracts to work as laborers and servants in the American colonies. These bound workers agreed in return for passage to America to work for a period of five to ten years with no compensation but their upkeep. Strictly controlled by their masters, servants could be physically punished and suffered abuse to which there was little recourse. If an indentured woman became pregnant, any time lost from work was added to her term of service. Many of the servants imported into America were kidnapped, tricked into signing contracts, and forcibly deported as punishment for crimes. More than a few convicts were sent to the colonies as indentured servants. Conditions on the ships that carried the servants to America were almost as filthy and inhumane as those on slavers. Still, the indenture was a contract and English servants could sue their masters if they failed to fulfill the agreement. After a term of service, the indentured person became free, usually outfitted with a suite of clothes, farm tools, seed, and perhaps a gun. In some North American colonies, such as the Carolinas and in Pennsylvania, servants also received small grants of land. By 1700, it is estimated that an enslaved African could be purchased for 20 pounds whereas an indentured servant cost in expenses about 15 pounds plus the price of voyage. Because the enslaved person was a slave for life, more easily exploited, and lived longer than white farm boys from England, indentured servitude began to be replaced after 1700 by slavery. This was true except in the New England colonies, where the so-called "cold weather" diseases like, influenza, pleurisy, whopping cough, and measles, killed Africans at a higher rate than Europeans. Even so, the system lasted only for a few years longer as the price of indentured servants exceeded the price of free wage laborers in the North and Middle Atlantic colonies.

Indian Removal Act of 1830: In 1830, Congress adopted a policy to relocate all Native Americans tribes east of the Mississippi River. They set aside a zone west of the river (mostly in modern Oklahoma) to be Indian Territory, where the relocated tribes would hold their land "in perpetuity." Indian fighter Andrew Jackson, elected President in 1828, vigorously executed the policy. During his eight years as president, the U.S. Government negotiated 94 treaties compelling Native Americans to give up millions of acres. While many tribes extinguished title to their lands voluntarily, three resisted. In 1832, the Fox and Sauk, led by Chief Black Hawk, resisted by returning to Illinois, but were driven back. The Cherokee contested the Government in the courts, winning in the U.S. Supreme Court. In Worcester v. Georgia (1831), Chief Justice John Marshall wrote the majority opinion ruling that Georgia had no authority over the Cherokee and no claim to their land. Jackson ignored the Supreme Court ruling, reportedly saying, "John Marshall has made his decision; now let him enforce it." Military force was used to evict tribal members from their homes, and the U.S. Army organized the migration to the West. Scores of Native Americans died because of poor planning, food shortages, cold, and disease along the 1838 migration route infamously called the "Trail of Tears." The Seminole mounted the most vigorous resistance to removal of all the tribes, fighting the Second Seminole War for seven years, and the Third Seminole War for another three years. The 100 or so members of the tribe who vanished into Florida's Everglades in 1858 and their descendants are the only unconquered Native American people east of the Mississippi River.