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Contact: Toni Costonie or Stanley Young
773-615-6049
New Book Documents African American Slavery, Indenture & Resistance in Illinois
African American Slavery, Indenture, and Resistance in Illinois is the first new book about slavery in Illinois in almost 100 years. Approaching the subject from an entirely unique perspective, this book documents the little known story of the enslavement of African Americans in Illinois, during the period of 1720 to 1864. While focusing on African Americans statewide, this book also connects the history of slavery to its origin in European colonization and settlement.
French colonizers initially enslaved captured American Indians…this experiment was short lived. Africans were imported, initially to supplement the indigenous work force, but soon replaced them entirely. To provide a more comprehensive and balanced view of the cultural context in which slavery in this region arose, this book begins with a brief sketch of the way of life of American Indians living in Illinois Country before European contact.
In the 1600’s, the French claimed the whole Mississippi River region, from Minnesota to the Gulf of Mexico, as New France and the Louisiana Territory. As part of their strategy to create a French Empire in North America, they enslaved local Indians and imported enslaved Africans to provide labor for mining, construction, development, farming, transportation, and as personal and house servants. In the early days African Americans in Illinois were governed by the Louisiana’s Code Noir—or Black Codes. During that period, in the Illinois towns of Kaskaskia and Cahokia, which were ancient Indian towns that became European towns -- and in the nearby towns of Fort du Chartres and Prairie du Rocher, blacks comprised more than thirty percent of the population. These colonies provided sorely needed fresh produce, meat, and lumber to the fledgling colonies of the lower Mississippi River valley.
This book also documents the control and governance of the Illinois territory, first by the British, and then by the westward-moving post-Revolutionary war American settlers, and explores how each group dealt with the issue of slavery. In 1818 when Illinois became a state, the constitution outlawed slavery but permitted a very oppressive form of indentured servitude that, in effect, was nothing more than slavery by another name. Under indentured servitude, African Americans were “contracted” to work for a specific term of service for no pay, under the complete dominance and control of the contract owner, and with no rights as a citizen. In many instances these “contracts” were for as long as 99 years. It is unlikely that the servants knowingly or freely entered into those contracts. Most of the servants undoubtedly claimed they never signed the contract. However, the elimination of legal rights under the contract of indenture coupled with black laws meant blacks were denied any legal means to challenge the contract. Even if a court took the case, the court would be required to disallow or ignore testimony from the servant that he or she did not sign the contract because African Americans were prohibited by law from testifying against any white person in court.
Gallatin County in southeastern Illinois was exempted from the no slavery clause in the constitution and was permitted to employ both slave labor and indentured servants. Salt was responsible for that exemption. Salt, which was needed to preserve meats before refrigeration, was essential to survival in the wilderness. Gallatin County not only had a monopoly on salt in the region but also was uniquely situated near the intersection of the Ohio and Mississippi Rivers – the two principal long distance transportation highways at the time. That combination of resources and geography made Gallatin County an economic and political powerhouse that provided essential income to the state government, which caused the rest of the state to cater to them and their demands.
The state constitution and individual counties developed the Black Codes, which
were designed to make it impossible for free blacks to live anywhere in the
state. Free blacks had to present their certificate of freedom to the County
Clerk and pay, often exorbitant, bonds or they had two weeks to leave the state
or face imprisonment, whipping, being claimed as someone’s indentured
servant and / or being sold into slavery.
Gallatin County also became famous as a headquarters of the “Reverse Underground
Railroad.” John Hart Crenshaw a leading citizen of Gallatin County who
was also a slave owner, and was associated with several gangs that kidnapped
and sold many blacks, both slave and free, into slavery in the South. Crenshaw’s
house, known as the Old Slave House or Hickory Hill, was specially built to
hide and hold kidnap victims until they were taken seven miles east by wagon
to the Ohio River where they were carried South by boat and sold into the Cotton
Kingdom. The headquarters of several gangs that, in addition to kidnappings,
terrorized travelers on the river and locals was Cave-in-Rock in southern Illinois.
In addition to documenting slavery in Illinois, this book examines the response of blacks to this oppressive and discriminatory legal system. They resisted slavery and indenture in every way that they could. The most common form of resistance was escape. Enslaved African Americans ran away at every opportunity. Eventually Illinois had one of the most sophisticated, well developed, and clandestine Underground Railroad networks in the country.
One of history’s best kept secrets is the work of the African Methodist
Episcopal Church in helping slaves escape and begin new lives. Bishop William
Quinn and Mother Pricilla Baltimore (often called the Harriet Tubman of Illinois)
were among the heroes of the Underground Railroad in Illinois—they helped
many slaves escaping from, or through, Missouri into Illinois and into secret
black settlements. Early in his career Bishop Quinn became a traveling itinerant
minister for the African Methodist Episcopal church. The church gave him the
assignment of establishing AME churches in the area east of the Mississippi
River (west of the river was 'wilderness' that had not yet been colonized by
Europeans) and west of the Allegheny Mountains. Before he was done Quinn had
established 47 AME churches…all of them also Underground Railroad stations.
They were assisted by many other churches and denominations---in fact the Underground
Railroad has been called the first integrated social movement in the United
States.
Eventually a network of clandestine black settlements dotted the landscape in Illinois from the Shawnee Forest in the south all the way north to the shores of Lake Michigan in what is now Chicago. The black town movement of Illinois was part of what became an informal network of black towns in Indiana, Michigan, Ohio, Oklahoma, Iowa, Kansas, and other states. Black pioneers played an important role in the settlement of the Midwest and West. In their quest for freedom, they often built settlements as far away from any existing settlements as they could---this opened unsettled regions to other settlers.
The book was written by Toni Costonie who worked in the museum field as a researcher, archivist, curator, and director for more than 20 years. Zada Johnson an anthropologist, who teaches at Northeastern Illinois University’s Carruthers Center for Inner City Studies and PhD candidate at the University of Chicago, contributed an essay about the Black Codes of Illinois. Stanley Young, a Certified Public Accountant and Assistant Dean of Information Technology at Kennedy-King College in Chicago, with the assistance of Alice B. Hammond who has a masters degree in Inner City Studies from Northeastern Illinois University’s Carruthers Center for Inner City Studies where she now teaches, contributed their essay on financing the slave trade--connecting this global enterprise to Illinois. Renowned photographer "Onikwa" Bill Wallace and Toni Costonie traveled to southern Illinois to photograph and document historic sites connected to the slave trade and to photograph black towns and settlements. Part of the research was conducted for the Illinois Transatlantic Slave Trade Research Commission a research project which was created in 2006, by Governor Blagojevich and Illinois State Legislature.
Very well researched! Sources include the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and the Illinois State Library and Archives in Springfield, Knox College Special Collections in Galesburg, Vivian Harsh Collection at the Carter G. Woodson Regional Library, the Chicago History Museum, the American Indian Center in Chicago, University of Illinois at Carbondale and Champaign-Urbana, Gallatin County Court House, Bloomington-Normal Historical Society, Kaskaskia Historical Collection, St. Genevieve Visitors Center in Missouri, the Mississippi State Archives, the Williams Research Center and Amistad Collection at Tulane University in New Orleans, Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture in New York City, the Wisconsin Historical Society, the Indiana Historical Society, the Ohio Historical Society and more. Material for book was drawn from county records and histories, census records, rare books, unpublished dissertations and manuscripts, oral history interviews, and other primary sources.
The authors are available for lectures, audio visual historical presentations, and book signings at libraries, universities, colleges, high schools, churches, historical organizations, and more. For more information please visit our website: Costonie.com, or call us at 773-615-6049.