Four Hundred Souls summary

In 1619, a few dozen Africans stepped off a slave ship and onto the shores of a colony called Virginia. This handful of souls were the first Black residents of a land that would one day become the United States of America – but they would not be the last.

These blinks present a few glimpses into a complex, contested history that spans 400 years. To do this, they draw insights, reflections, and analysis from ninety different authors, historians, thinkers, and activists. This collection weaves together portions of these many contributions to tell stories of courageous leaders, revolutionary social movements, and everyday people to present a nuanced discussion of race, identity, struggle, and hope. These diverse perspectives flesh out a rich and multilayered account of Black America and explore what this history can tell us about contemporary American culture. 

In these blinks, you’ll learn

• why southern states resisted Black migration north;
• how racism evolved in colonial America; and
• what makes Hurricane Katrina a pivotal moment in history.

Let’s take a trip to Liverpool. This rainy port city on the western edge of England is a far cry from the tobacco fields of Virginia. Yet there are African figures carved into the facade of its city hall. Down the street, a prominent bank features a relief of young boys in shackles. Here, too, slavery has left an indelible stain.

These homages to human suffering stem from the source of Liverpool’s wealth. Throughout the seventeenth century, England and companies owned by the Crown accounted for two-thirds of the Mid-Atlantic slave trade. Ships departing from Liverpool transported more than 1.5 million enslaved people from Africa to the Americas. 

It’s another stark reminder of the driving force behind the sin of slavery: pure greed. Countless lives were ruined in the government-sanctioned pursuit of profit. 

Here’s the key message: Slavery was slowly entrenched by a series of anti-Black laws.

American colonialism was extremely lucrative for the ruling elite of England. Colonies like Virginia provided ample natural resources and valuable cash crops to export back to foreign markets. In the strict class society of the colonies, the labor of producing these goods fell on the backs of indentured servants and enslaved people. The system was cruel and exploitative.

In 1676, economic tensions in Virginia boiled over. A colonist named Nathaniel Bacon led an armed insurrection against the colonial governor. His forces consisted of working-class men, including both white servants and enslaved Black people, fighting together. The rebellion was crushed, but the multiracial uprising alarmed the upper class.

In the aftermath of the rebellion, the Virginia Assembly passed a series of laws to ensure such an event could never occur again. The Law for Preventing Negro Insurrection put new restrictions on Black residents, limiting their freedom to move or carry anything deemed a weapon. The white insurrectionists were spared these harsh penalties, granting them just enough privilege to feel empowered against their erstwhile allies – an early example of racial hierarchy used to dismantle class solidarity.

This legislation built on existing laws that fixed Black people at the lowest rung of society. In 1667, the Assembly passed legislation declaring that Christian baptism did not grant an enslaved person freedom. While Christianity preached brotherhood, this law placed Black people outside the protections of the Church. While faith could provide enslaved people with hope and community, the new law ensured it could not provide them with freedom.

On a cool spring night in 1712, a group of two dozen enslaved men, most likely Akan-Asante people from the Gold Coast of West Africa, lit fires at the northern edge of New York City. When white residents arrived to investigate, the band of rebels attacked with guns, clubs, and knives.

The colony’s governor invoked martial law to quell the uprising. In the end, more than 70 enslaved people were executed for their attempt at freedom. The crackdown was brutal. Still, in 1741, the city experienced an even larger, more elaborate revolt.

It’s a recurring pattern throughout American history. The human desire for freedom is hard to extinguish. 

The key message is this: Oppression and injustice were always met with Black struggle and resistance. 

By the eighteenth century, chattel slavery was common throughout the Americas. Northern colonies like New York were no exception. Between 1700 and 1724, more than 4,000 people were imported into the colony as property. Up north, just as in the south, society’s racial caste system was strictly enforced by a draconian “slave code” which forbade enslaved people from meeting in groups or even showing disdain for their white oppressors.

In New York City, enslaved people were bought and sold at the “Meal Market,” located just off Wall Street. Here, the brutal reality of human trafficking was dressed in spectacle. African people were treated as commodities. Slave traders greased their captives’ skin to give them the appearance of health and vitality after the grueling Atlantic voyage. Buyers got drunk on wine and brandy as they bid on human lives.

But as slavery expanded, so did Black resistance. By 1724, enslaved people had staged more than 50 large insurrections in cities and on slave ships. Even more common was so-called “marronage,” or enslaved people escaping to freedom. In Virginia and the Carolinas, those who could escape formed maroon communities tucked away in the Blue Ridge Mountains. The existence of these independent communities gave hope to those still oppressed.

Another source of fortitude was spirituality and song. People enslaved in the Americas retained their religions and customs. The sheer diversity of people trafficked to the colonies resulted in enslaved communities developing rich and varied artistic and musical traditions. While much of this creative output was suppressed or lost to history, the musical genius lives on, and became the foundation for much of American musical culture today.

Thomas Jefferson, author of the Declaration of Independence, famously wrote that all men were created equal. Yet, in 1781, this same man wrote that Black people should be excluded from the democratic process because of, in his words, “the real distinctions which nature has made.”

Such are the contradictions of the Enlightenment. This era ushered in new, more methodical approaches to understanding the world. Nonetheless, Enlightenment thinkers often misapplied scientific concepts to justify racial hierarchy. Leading intellectuals looked at the unequal society they created and absurdly concluded it existed because Black people were naturally inferior.

But when we examine the accomplishments of African Americans during this time, it’s clear this Enlightenment-era thinking didn’t reflect reality at all.

The key message here is: Black accomplishments defied the scientific racism of the Enlightenment. 

By the mid-1700s, intellectual luminaries commonly used shoddy and biased “science” to justify white supremacy. It was argued that God and biology had endowed Black people with fewer innate virtues, like reason or prudence. Similar logic was used to defend the violent repression of Native Americans and their removal from their lands – another brutal practice that continued throughout the century. 

Consider Lucy Terry Prince. Born in Africa, she was kidnapped and enslaved around 1730. Prince is a testament to the resilience and aptitude of African Americans in the face of systemic oppression. After she grew up enslaved, her husband, Abijah Prince, purchased her freedom. An accomplished orator, musician, and poet, she earned fame around her chosen home of Vermont. Then, in the 1790s, she applied her rhetorical skills to argue winning cases before the state Supreme Court – an astounding feat considering the prejudicial system stacked against her. 

Or read the poems of Phillis Wheatley. Enslaved throughout her life, Phillis penned beautiful and evocative verses that still resonate today. In her poem “To a Lady on Her Remarkable Preservation in a Hurricane in North Carolina,” she captures the heartfelt reunion of a separated mother and daughter. In “A Farewell to America,” she deftly conveys the frustration and melancholy of living a life stripped of autonomy. 

In 1780, a woman known only as Mumbet successfully leveraged Enlightenment ideals to her own purpose. Keenly aware that the liberty promised by the newly ratified constitution of Massachusetts was incompatible with her enslavement, she, with the help of a lawyer, sued for her freedom. The court couldn’t deny her argument. Mumbet won her case, effectively ending slavery in the state.

The American people elected their first president in 1789. Or, to be more accurate, a small faction of white male property owners over the age of 21 elected the president. They chose George Washington: wealthy, well-respected, and the undisputed hero of the Revolutionary War. 

He was also a slave owner. In fact, prior to the Civil War, twelve different presidents held enslaved people. Only six did not. For a nation founded on the ideals of freedom and equality, such a statistic seems incongruous. 

But, in truth, even the founding documents of the country enshrined human bondage as an institution. While the constitution does not explicitly mention slavery, it nonetheless preserved the practice under the guise of protecting property rights. Thus, slavery continued to drive the economy of the young republic.

Here’s the key message: After the Revolution, slavery flourished. 

The American Revolution was an opportunity to rewrite the laws of the land. The near contemporaneous revolution in France had curtailed slavery in that nation. A decade later, the Haitian Revolution would completely ban slavery and create the world’s first Black-led republic. By contrast, the early American government actually strengthened the institution of slavery. In 1793, Congress passed the Fugitive Slave Act. This egregious law stated that any enslaved person who managed to escape to a nominally “free” state could be recaptured and returned to bondage. Moreover, it made it illegal even to aid an escaped person. In effect, this elevated slavery’s twisted conception of property rights above other laws, including a state’s right to abolition within its borders.

Thus, as the nation grew, slavery grew with it. Armed, militant vigilantes created an entire industry in the capturing and reselling of Black people from northern states. Southern gentry continued amassing wealth and political power from slave labor on enormous cotton plantations. Educated elites, too, benefited from the institution. All across the country, prestigious academic institutions like the University of Virginia, Georgetown College, and Rutgers University were built and funded by enslaved labor.

Yet, beneath this cruel system, Black communities and cultures still thrived. The millions brought from Africa or born into slavery continued living lives filled with meaning, spirituality, and love. Recent research indicates that even under these dire conditions, Black society was rich with overlooked diversity, including strains of homosexual, trans, and queer expressions of intimacy. Even the most oppressive laws could not eliminate innate humanity. 

“We wish to plead our own cause . . . .” 

Thus begins the first editorial published in Freedom’s Journal, New York’s first Black-owned newspaper. It was written by the founding editors, abolitionists John Russwurm, the first African American to graduate from Bowdoin College, and Samuel Cornish, a Presbyterian minister and journalist.

Freedom’s Journal was first published in 1827 to provide a voice to Black people and causes. The paper covered news of the day, argued against racist ideologies, and pushed for stronger action toward abolition. At its height, the paper circulated in eleven states, and even reached the shores of Haiti and Europe. Along the way, it inspired dozens of similar publications.

More than just a newspaper, Freedom’s Journal was a movement. Its success demonstrates how principled leadership, incisive thinking, and inspired organizing fueled Americas’ emerging Black identity. 

The key message is this: As opposition to slavery mounted, Black thinkers explored possible futures.

In the decades preceding the Civil War, the issues of slavery, emancipation, and Black identity were at the forefront of public discourse. By 1830, the country was home to two million enslaved people. In the south, Black leaders like Nat Turner, and Denmark Vesey led increasingly frequent insurrections against the established order. Meanwhile, in the northern states, free Black people and progressive whites called for change.

Out of this movement arose the National Negro Conventions. Organized by prominent Black publications like Freedom’s Journal and The Liberator, these large gatherings brought together Black leaders, clergy, and businesspeople to debate contemporary political issues. Speakers advocated a diverse range of actions, from abolition to racial separatism to mass emigration to western Africa. These conventions not only spread ideas, but also connected people to a network that spanned geography and social class.

A prominent member of this network was Maria Stewart. A sharp thinker, Stewart wrote insightful essays and delivered public lectures that nimbly dissected the multiple challenges facing Black women. In her 1831 pamphlet “Religion and the Pure Principles of Morality, The Sure Foundation on Which We Must Build,” she argued against commonplace racism, but also called out the pernicious sexism within the Black community. In this way, she laid the groundwork for later writing on race and intersectionality.

Beyond these high-profile debates, countless individuals navigated America’s racial landscape on their own terms. Some relied on disguises, or a lighter complexion, to “pass” for white. Others proudly claimed their Black identity despite the hardships. In all cases, however, they were forced to make hard decisions about how to live in an unjust society.

At the outbreak of the American Civil War, President Lincoln was reluctant to enlist Black troops in the Union Army. Early on, when 300 free Black men volunteered to defend Washington, D.C., the War Department turned them away.

Yet, as the war progressed, Lincoln’s views evolved. In 1863, the Emancipation Proclamation freed enslaved people across the country and allowed Black men to fight, albeit in special segregated battalions. By the end, nearly 200,000 free and liberated Black men pushed Union forces to victory in dozens of major battles. 

Many of these soldiers went on to serve as some of America’s first Black politicians. But the fight for equality was far from over. As Frederick Douglass mused, the future still held “a mightier work than the abolition of slavery.”

The key message here is: The victory of emancipation did not deter white racism and violence.

Douglass’s words were, indeed, prophetic. At the close of the Civil War, slavery was illegal and the Fourteenth and Fifteenth amendments promised citizenship and voting rights for all men, regardless of race. Across the south, Black veterans organized into Union Leagues to advocate for protection, land, and political representation for their communities. More than 700,000 Black citizens registered to vote.

But reactionary white people moved to stifle this rising political force. Organized hate groups and vigilante squads like the White League, the White Knights, the Ku Klux Klan terrorized Black communities with impunity. They assassinated Black politicians and threatened entire communities who tried to register to vote. By 1870, the Klan had successfully overthrown the progressive government of North Carolina. In 1869, they strong-armed the Georgia legislature into removing 33 Black lawmakers. Then they barred Black citizens from holding office.

This widespread violence was again justified by virulent forms of anti-Black racism. Southern academics like Philip Alexander Bruce argued that emancipation had only emboldened the “worst” aspects of the African American character. Others stirred up moral panic about Black men threatening the “sexual purity” of white women through sexual assault. This resulted in a rampant epidemic of violent lynchings across the country, which continued for more than a century.

This ongoing bloodshed stirred journalist Ida B. Wells-Barnett to action. In 1892, she published Southern Horrors, a painstakingly researched pamphlet that demonstrated how anti-Black tropes both masked the violence of lynching and further oppressed Black women. In response, she argued for Black communities to arm themselves and organize for economic power. Wells-Barnett took her own words to heart: shortly after, she went on to found the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, commonly called the NAACP.

It was July 27, 1919, and 17-year-old Eugene Williams was basking in Lake Michigan – a cool retreat from the muggy Chicago heat. Perhaps lost in the feeling, he drifted across the invisible line that divided the waters along racial lines. An onlooker hurled a rock at him. Eugene was struck, and drowned.

The murder pushed the racial tensions in the city past the boiling point. In the weeks that followed, the streets were filled with violence. Dozens were killed and hundreds more injured in what came to be known as the “Red Summer.”

The event illustrated an ugly truth: segregation and racial violence weren't exclusive to the Jim Crow south. The country’s northern cities also restricted and curtailed Black lives. Yet these cities offered opportunity as well.

Here is the key message: The Great Migration reshaped the geography of Black culture.

In 1896, the Supreme Court’s Plessy v. Ferguson decision made “separate but equal” the law of the land. In the south, segregationist Jim Crow laws locked Black people into a second-class existence. Rather than tolerate the cruelty, many families sought better lives up north. They left the fields of the deep south en masse for industrial centers in the north, like Chicago, New York City, Milwaukee, and Philadelphia. Within decades, more than six million Black people would relocate.

But the south’s economy relied on Black communities as a source of cheap labor. Across the region, authorities attempted to stem the tide. In Georgia, Black folks were arrested for buying train tickets heading north. In Mississippi, northbound trains were prevented from taking on Black passengers.

Of course, the northern cities weren’t utopias of equality, either. Restrictive laws like “red-lining” confined Black people to specific, often intentionally neglected neighborhoods. Working-class white people, fearful of Black labor undercutting their wages, blocked migrants from entire industries. The legacies of these policies still reverberate today in racial disparities that persist in education, income, and homeownership.

In the face of these barriers, Black communities still blossomed. In the 1920s, New York’s Harlem became an epicenter of Black literary and musical culture. Here, magazines like Opportunity and The Crisis published bold young writers like Langston Hughes and Zora Neale Hurston. Musicians like Louis Armstrong and Bessie Smith filled local juke joints with music. Even in the shadow of Jim Crow, Black artistic and intellectual greatness made enormous contributions to culture. 

In 1947, C. G. Jennings tried to register his daughters at a white high school in Hearne, Texas. His attempt was denied. Fed up with the inequality, he sued, kicking off the fight for school desegregation.

In 1955, James Baldwin published Notes of a Native Son. The collection of astute essays deftly explored Black culture as an expansive global phenomenon. The book sparked conversations across the country.

In 1963, Stokely Carmichael stood in the heat of Greenwood, Mississippi, speaking to a crowd of organizers as he extolled and encouraged Black Power. His rallying cry awakened a fiercer call for Civil Rights.

The struggle for Black liberation can’t be traced to a single person or moment. It’s a shared and ongoing effort that is renewed and redefined in each generation. 

The key message is this: The Combahee River Collective shaped Black activism beyond the Civil Rights era.

By the 1970s, the civil rights movement was at an impasse. Leaders like Ella Baker, Dr. Martin Luther King, and Malcolm X, along with countless others, had shepherded the movement to major successes like the passing of the 1965 Voting Rights Act, and the ostensible end of legal segregation in education, employment, and housing. Yet these milestones did not spell the end of discrimination and injustice.

So in 1974, a new group emerged in Boston to address contemporary issues facing Black women. They called themselves the Combahee River Collective, taking their name from the river where Harriet Tubman had led successful raids to rescue Black people from enslavement more than a century earlier. This diverse community of women organized radical study groups, educational retreats, and protests.

More than just a consciousness-raising exercise, the Collective made impressive inroads into many local causes. Shortly after forming, the group managed to help two local Black women avoid groundless criminal charges. Then, in 1975, Dr. Kenneth Edelin, a Black doctor, was convicted of manslaughter for providing legal abortions at Boston City Hospital. The Collective put together a legal challenge to have the conviction overturned.

Perhaps the Collective’s most enduring work is the 1977 Combahee River Collective Statement. Written by Beverly Smith, Demita Frazier, and Barbara Smith, this manifesto articulated how Black women must challenge a complex network of interlocking oppressions. It argued that to achieve liberation, Black women must push back against all these forces, including racism, sexism, capitalism, and homophobia. Their call for intersectional analysis and action is still heeded by many today.

You’re likely familiar with the images. Trees snapping in the wind like twigs. Whole neighborhoods swamped with floodwaters and debris. Desperate people stranded on rooftops, frantically waving at passing helicopters for help. 

This was Hurricane Katrina. The 2005 storm devastated New Orleans, a majority-Black city, and the United States government failed to provide adequate relief. In the aftermath, the city lost half of its population. Its poorest residents were scattered around the region, or trapped living in inhumane conditions. Women, subject to gender-based violence and frequently shouldering caretaker responsibilities, suffered particularly.

Yes, Katrina was a natural disaster – but it was a manmade one, too. The callous and systemic disregard for Black suffering exposed the as-yet-unfinished work of making Americans truly equal.

Here’s the key message: Black Lives Matter continues a four-hundred-year struggle.

For more than 400 years, Black Americans have lived, worked, and raised families in a system hostile to their flourishing. The monumental efforts of previous generations have scaled back some of the toxic prejudices and institutional injustices that were fundamental to the country’s founding. Yet, there is more work to be done – and a new generation is rising to the challenge.

In recent decades, new barriers to equality have been erected. In the 1980s, Ronald Reagan’s racist War on Drugs hollowed out Black neighborhoods with disproportionately enforced criminal statutes against people of color. In 1994, the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act, signed by Bill Clinton, accelerated the process by overfunding police departments and advocating draconian sentencing guidelines. As a result, America’s prison system has swallowed up huge portions of Black communities.

Today, Black people are still facing state-sanctioned violence. In 2012, a teen named Trayvon Martin was murdered while walking home from a store in Sanford, Florida. His murderer was acquitted. This outrageous injustice prompted three women, Alicia Garza, Patrisse Cullors, and Opal Tometi, to form a group called Black Lives Matter. The group turned into a movement, championing a global demand for all Black lives to be protected and respected. 

The banner of Black Lives Matter has brought increased attention to the many lives needlessly lost to oppressive, racist policing. Michael Brown, Renisha McBride, Sandra Bland: Theirs are household names now, thanks to the effort of BLM organizers and the millions of people who have turned out to support BLM demonstrations. While the movement faces critiques and backlash, even from those in power, collective efforts like BLM have succeeded before.