Those Who Write History

Heather William’s small new book was a big assignment. The Presidential Term Professor of Africana Studies’ 130-page American Slavery: A Very Short Introduction is part of a series from Oxford University Press that offers succinct starters on topics from accounting to witchcraft. It was a new kind of project for Williams, who had written two previous books. “It was tough,” she says of deciding what she needed most to include. “I wrote an entire book on education during slavery, and here I do two pages on literacy. Two short, short pages on literacy.”

Just choosing where to start was a challenge: the first state laws encoding hereditary slavery? The first Africans known to come to British America? The year Christopher Columbus landed? Williams began in 1441—a decade before Columbus was born— when the Portuguese engineered a ship that was able to sail to Africa and return with a cargo that included kidnapped human beings.  

That voyage grew over the next centuries into the Middle Passage, the forced movement of millions of people from Africa to Europe and the New World. Despite the brevity of her book, Williams used first-hand accounts here and throughout to speak about experiences that we may know abstractly. “I rely on primary sources because I think that’s what gives life to history,” she says. “How did people get to those ships on the coast? What’s that journey like? What experiences are they having? Who’s selling them? Who’s buying them? How does that happen?”

Williams was also careful to detail the effort that went into creating slavery in the United States by Europeans who came without slaves or intention of owning slaves, yet within decades had started to build a system that conferred hereditary ownership of other people. Slavery reached from Virginia and Maryland to Dutch New York and Massachusetts, but Virginia was key because colonists were often granted large amounts of land and began establishing big plantations. Though at first their labor force was of mixed races and indentured, by the 1640s, she says, “you see the colonists saying, okay, these people are going to be our slaves, and only these people are going to be our slaves. You’re going to know that this person is a slave because this person is black.” 

Laws were enacted to sort out issues such as who an enslaved woman’s child would belong to. “They’re putting all those systems into place. And I think that’s really important because it says none of this was inevitable; none of it was preordained. It’s something that people had to think about.” They also kept changing the laws, enacting anti-literacy laws for slaves or attempting to prevent distribution of anti-slavery material. “They never rest. They have to keep finding new ways in which people are trying to squeeze through and overthrow the oppression or challenge it in some way.” 

Williams, who was a practicing lawyer before she earned her doctorate, was fascinated by the legal machinations. She also described the labor done by the slaves, the scope of which is often overlooked. “Any kind of work you can imagine in this country, up to 1865, black people are doing it.” Enslaved people planted and harvested crops, processed the crops, made bricks for the buildings, and crafted everything from barrels to clothing. Their labor was key to America’s economy.

Williams has dedicated American Slavery “For the descendants.” “I just want regular people, especially African Americans, who have whatever degree of education [to read my writing]. I’m thinking about students. I’m thinking about my colleagues. Most of all I’m thinking about black people who are interested in history.” She was glad to see the book on a table of suggested gifts in the Penn bookstore before Christmas. “That was really cool, because I think the size, the price make it something that people will pick up.”