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Nearly 40 years before the first permanent European settlement in North America, Spanish explorers bring enslaved Africans to what are now the Carolinas. The Africans escape in what is the first recorded slave revolt in North America.
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Estevan, the first identified Muslim in North America, lands in Florida as a Moroccan guide to the Spaniards. During the ensuing years of the slave trade, as many as 20% of West African slaves brought to North America are Muslim.
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Newly established English colonies in North America create a demand for laborers in the New World. At first, captured Africans are brought to the colonies as indentured servants. Once their term (3-7 years) is completed, indentured servants are allowed to live free, own land, and have indentured servants of their own. However, this system does not last long; indentured servitude gives way to lifetime slavery for Africans as the British colonies grow and the need for a permanent, inexpensive labor force increases.
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Massachusetts becomes the first British colony to legitimize slavery. Other states soon follow suit. Rights for free Africans are gradually restricted. By 1662, all children born to slave parents in Virginia are enslaved as well. Slavery has become a self-perpetuating system.
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The English Crown charters the Society for Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts of the Anglican Church to convert slaves and Native Americans to Christianity. The drive to convert slaves is not welcomed by all slaveholders, however. Many are unwilling to allow their slaves to receive religious instruction, fearing that they will no longer be able to claim them as property once they are baptized. In 1705, Virginia passes a law that all laborers who "were not Christians in their Native Country... shall be slaves. A Negro, mulatto and Indian slaves ... shall be held to be real estate."
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Santa Teresa de Mose is established in Florida as a town for freed slaves who have converted to Catholicism. It becomes the first free black town in North America.
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The Great Awakening, a revitalization of religious expression, sweeps the British Colonies. The revival movement, unlike the earlier doctrine of the Puritans, promises the grace of God to all who experience a desire for it. Methodists and Baptists welcome African-Americans to join their ranks. Open-air preaching, and charismatic, passionate preachers attract throngs of participants.
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Small black congregations begin to emerge in the South. They are not necessarily affiliated with a church, but are instead informal gatherings held outdoors in "brush arbors." In the brush arbor both men and women are called by the spirit. Many of the male plantation preachers go on to found the first independent black churches - women remain itinerants.
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Georgia legalizes slavery. It is the last colony to do so.
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One of the first recorded black congregations is organized on the plantation of William Byrd in Mecklenburg, Virginia.
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Plantation slave preacher George Liele, the first black Baptist in Georgia, founds the Silver Bluff Baptist Church in Silver Bluff, South Carolina. The congregation includes free and enslaved blacks. One of Liele's original followers, Andrew Bryan, goes on to become ordained by the Baptist Church in 1788, and founds the Bryan Street African Baptist Church, which is later renamed the First African Baptist Church of Savannah.
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Phillis Wheatley, a freed slave, publishes Poems on Various Subjects, Religious and Moral. Wheatley's former owners, the Wheatleys of Boston, had provided Wheatley with an excellent education, rare for blacks and women at the time, and encouraged her to pursue writing.
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Society for the Relief of Free Negroes Unlawfully Held in Bondage, which later (1784) becomes known as the Pennsylvania Society for the Abolition of Slavery, is founded in Philadelphia. Quakers, who had abolished slavery among themselves nearly 20 years earlier, found the organization and revise its constitution to include a broader membership.
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The American Revolution, the war of independence from England, begins. Black soldiers fight for both the Loyalists - those loyal to England - and the Patriots. At least 5,000 black men serve in the Continental Army, and fight in key battles including Lexington, Concord, and Bunker Hill. British colonial governors try to incite slave rebellions and escapes by promising freedom to slaves who fight for the English Crown.
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