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Gallaudet's Position/Role in Colonization - Coggle Diagram
Gallaudet's Position/Role in Colonization
1) Feelings About Slavery in Hartford, CT
Connecticut ships were used to transport food to Caribbean plantations, Conn. factories made rum from slave-grown sugar and tools for the plantations
Residents claimed not to remember slavery in Hartford and ones that did, looked back on it as "a kindness to the poor heathen Africans who were too simple to care for themselves"
A textbook at the time taught children that Africans "have always been a simple people, and for many centuries it has been the practice of other nations to use them as slaves"
Scientists at the time stated that the "facial angle" of Africans proved them to be the missing link between white men and monkeys
A medical journal stated that mixed race people were "sterile, like mules
Clergy preached that Black people were unable to comprehend the concept of religion and that they had been chosen to go to hell
Most white Americans at the time felt that the constitution did not apply to black people
Gallaudet signed a statement asserting that the constitution gives white men a right to their "property" (being slaves)
2) Segregation & Violence
Housing for black people was segregated
Race was marked on the stagecoach for black travelers
Segregated societies began to form: Gallaudet was part of the Co. Temperance Society while another Congregational minister, James W.C. Pennington was the president of an all-black temperance society
Black residents formed their own churches, schools, clubs, insurance co-ops, cemeteries
Mobs of white men often attacked black businesses, churches and homes
A Hartford resident who only identified themselves as "J.K." reported that a certain mob was caused by the rape of some black women by a group of white men. When the women were saved by some black men, the white men were offend and "determined to have their revenge"
While all of this was happening, Gallaudet was present but focusing rather on the work of deporting black people to Africa
3) The American/Connecticut Colonization Society
Gallaudet joined this society with the idea that deporting slaves to Africa would encourage slaveowners to release them
The societies view of free blacks, saw them as "insolent and domineering," "useless and pernicious, if not dangerous"
Their goal was to remove black people to prevent against emancipation and intermarriage
Gallaudet became involved when he helped form the Connecticut Colonization Society in Hartford
He proposed "that the liberated slaves should be bound to pay for their passage, and even their freedom, if necessary, after their arrival in Africa
Gallaudet became very involved with the society during the case of Abd al Rahman Ibrahima ibn Sori. He was a captured prince who was sold as a slave in America. Gallaudet and the society worked to convert him to Christianity before they sent him to Africa
4) Education of African Americans
The Connecticut Colonization Society asserted that educating black children was a waste of time
Some colonizationists believed that African Americans had to be educated before they got deported so they could spread Christianity
The African Education Society was created but run more like a boot camp rather than school and would subject black children to a program of "constant and untiring inroads on their wrong habits and propensities"
A Connecticut women who opened a school for girls of color was arrested after a law was passed in 1833, stating that schools could not admit people of color who were not from Connecticut
The law applied to Gallaudet's Asylum as well considering they had three African American students. They all ended their studies at the school after the law went into effect