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Blink 3 of 8 - The 5 AM Club
by Robin Sharma
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Four Hundred Souls summary
Ibram X. Kendi and Keisha N. Blain
A COMMUNITY HISTORY OF AFRICAN AMERICA, 1619–2019
35 mins
Table of Contents
Four Hundred Souls
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Key idea 1 of 10
The story of America is deeply entangled with the practice of slavery.
In popular mythology, the story of America began in November of 1620, when the English colonial ship, Mayflower arrived on the shores of Massachusetts. The story goes on to herald its Pilgrim passengers as some of America’s first non-native residents.
Yet, just a year earlier, another English ship docked farther south along the coast, in Virginia. The arrival of this ship, White Lion, also deeply shaped the course of America’s history. Like the Mayflower, this ship had an English crew. But inside, it transported about two dozen captives from Angola.
These enslaved people were sold as property to Virginia’s English colonists. Unlike the Pilgrims, we don’t know their names or individual stories, but their arrival in the “New World” is equally significant in American history.
This is the key message: The story of America is deeply entangled with the practice of slavery.
The tales around these two arrivals, the Mayflower and the White Lion, highlight a foundational rupture in the American story. The Mayflower’s story is framed as human triumph. The Pilgrims crossed the ocean seeking a better life, and built a new society to achieve their vision. By contrast, the captive Angolans on the White Lion arrived as property, already stripped of their humanity. They were transported against their will and denied their own pursuit of happiness.
Africans lived in the New World prior to 1619, too. Spanish and Portuguese slave traders brought many to the Caribbean as early as the 1520s. As colonization continued, the practice of capturing people in Africa and selling them to work as slaves in the Americas only grew. To feed this inhumane industry, Europeans plundered the agricultural expertise and technical skills of many West African communities, including the Mandinka, Peul, Wolof, and Hausa. Over time, this transatlantic slave trade became the largest movement of people in world history.
It’s difficult to understate the depravity of slavery as an institution. Enslaved Africans were denied the basic human rights of autonomy and self-determination. To justify such conditions, Europeans constructed an elaborate ideology in which Blackness was always inferior to Whiteness. Over time, laws both official and unspoken came to enforce this racial divide.
Of course, the settling of America was only possible thanks to Black labor and expertise. By 1649, more than 300 Black people lived in the British colony of Virginia. The colonists relied on these people for their agricultural knowledge and domestic skills. By 1662, a Virginia law declared that all people born to enslaved mothers would also be enslaved. Slavery was thus woven even deeper into the fabric of American society – as we will explore more in the next blink.
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What is Four Hundred Souls about?
Four Hundred Souls (2021) is an innovative and insightful recounting of African American history. This collection brings together ninety different authors to reflect on four-hundred years of struggle, oppression, and hope.
Best quote from Four Hundred Souls
The system of racialized slavery that is now seared into the American public consciousness took centuries to metastasize and mature.
—Ibram X. Kendi and Keisha N. Blain
Who should read Four Hundred Souls?
- Americans curious to explore their country’s layered history
- Politically engaged thinkers wishing to understand the roots of current issues
- Anyone who wants more insight into the Black experience
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