Unit 2 Study Notes: Resistance, Abolition, and the Making of Free Black Life

Resistance to enslavement

The many ways enslaved African and African-descended people opposed, negotiated, challenged, and survived slavery, including everyday actions, cultural/spiritual practices, flight, and organized revolt.

Everyday resistance

Covert, constant, strategic actions that undermined enslavers’ control without openly declaring rebellion (e.g., slowdowns, theft, role-playing, subtle negotiation).

Work slowdowns

A form of everyday resistance in which enslaved people deliberately reduced work pace or efficiency to resist exploitation and pressure enslavers’ expectations.

Cultural resistance

Maintaining and reshaping African-derived identities, values, and community life under slavery as a tool for survival, solidarity, and dignity.

Black Christianity

Religious practice among enslaved and free Black people (often blending Christian and African traditions) that could provide mutual care, a language of liberation, and sometimes coded communication.

Spirituals

Communal religious songs that expressed grief and hope and helped build solidarity and shared belief; they were not always literal coded escape instructions.

Fictive kin

Family-like relationships and networks formed beyond blood ties to endure forced separations and support community survival under slavery.

Literacy (as resistance)

Learning to read or write (when possible) as a challenge to laws and norms enforcing ignorance, strengthening communication and claims to humanity and rights.

Flight

Resistance through mobility—escaping slavery by running away, often requiring information, resources, and support networks despite severe risk of capture and punishment.

Marronage

Escape from slavery combined with the creation of independent, self-sustaining communities (maroon communities), often in hard-to-control environments.

Maroon communities

Independent settlements of formerly enslaved people, often located in swamps or mountains where surveillance was difficult, supported by geography, local knowledge, and outside connections.

Underground Railroad

A shifting set of people, routes, safe houses, and strategies that helped enslaved people escape; it was not a literal railroad or a single unified organization.

Organized rebellion

Coordinated, collective attempts to overthrow enslavers’ power through force or planned uprising; rarer than everyday resistance due to extreme risks but politically impactful.

Abolitionism

The organized effort to end slavery (and often the racial hierarchy supporting it), involving diverse participants and strategies such as moral persuasion, politics, petitions, and direct aid.

Transatlantic abolition context

The broader Atlantic-world conditions shaping abolitionist movements, including Enlightenment ideals, religious reform (e.g., Quakers), revolutions (especially Haiti), and British abolition (1807 trade; 1833 slavery).

Black abolitionism

Antislavery activism led by free and formerly enslaved Black people and their institutions, using lived authority, organizing capacity, testimony, and direct aid to fugitives.

Slave narrative

A first-person account by a formerly enslaved person used to document slavery’s violence, establish credibility and humanity, expose contradictions (including religious ones), and mobilize antislavery action.

Moral suasion

An abolitionist strategy aiming to persuade people that slavery was a sin and moral evil through sermons, lectures, narratives, and descriptions of brutality.

Print culture

Abolitionist use of newspapers, pamphlets, books, and images to spread ideas, coordinate activism across distance, and influence public opinion like an early mass media system.

Petition campaigns

Organized efforts to submit signed demands to legislatures—especially important for people excluded from voting—forcing lawmakers to confront antislavery issues even amid attempts to silence debate.

Political abolitionism

Antislavery strategy focused on elections, parties, and legislation, especially as U.S. territorial expansion intensified conflict over whether new areas would allow slavery.

Fugitive Slave Act of 1850

A law that strengthened federal enforcement for capturing alleged fugitives, increased danger for free Black communities (including kidnapping risks), and intensified sectional conflict by involving the North in enforcement.

Free Black communities

Networks and neighborhoods of legally free African Americans who built institutions to protect families and futures under racism; legal freedom did not guarantee safety, rights, or equality.

Mutual aid societies

Community organizations that provided support for illness, unemployment, burials, and emergencies and also functioned as political infrastructure (e.g., raising funds for legal defense in fugitive cases).

African Methodist Episcopal (AME) Church

A major Black-led religious and organizing institution founded in 1816 by Richard Allen, serving as a spiritual center and political meeting space within free Black communities.