Geidy Espinal 

Professor Poe

BLST 10100 – Fall 2020

12/05/20

Multimodal Project – Historical Figure (Ira Berlín) 

Ira Berlin was born on May 27, 1941, and died on June 5, 2018. He was an American history professor at the University of Maryland. Extending over five decades, Berlin’s helped in the understandings of African American history and made struggles over slavery and freedom central to North American history. In his essay, Time, Space, and the Evolution of Afro-American Society on British Mainland in North America, Ira Berlin highlights the relevance of time and space in understanding how enslaved Africans not only communicated and developed relationships with one another and their masters but also how they resisted against their conditions and maintained their heritage within the different regional slave societies.

Throughout Time, Space, and the Evolution of Afro-American Society on British Mainland North America Ira Berlin trace the generations of slaves, their masters, and the unique historical circumstances each group lived under. Berlin takes the number of Africans and African-Americans in slavery and puts each one of them into five generations—the Charter Generation, the Plantation Generation, the Revolutionary Generation, the Migration Generation, and the Freedom Generation. Berlin demonstrates how each generation experienced different conditions and built their lives different from their ancestors. Berlin showed us how slaves spreading throughout America affected their lifestyle just because they took separate ways and experience different things. As slaves started spreading over America we got to see how Northern slaves gained more knowledge and had more opportunities than what southern slaves did. The text states that “A visitor to Connecticut noted in disgust that slaveowners were “too Indulgent (especially the farmers) to their Slaves, suffering too great a familiarity from them, permitting them to sit at the table and eat with them (as they say to save time) and into the dish goes the black hoof as freely as the white hand.” Slaves used knowledge gained at their masters’ tables to press for additional privileges: the right to visit friends, live with their families, or hire their own time”(Page 51). This illustrates that Northern black people were improving their relationship with the Northern white people leading to them making changes and gaining more rights. The way Northern slaves lived and the part they lived in, influenced a lot in their view on slavery because they did not rely on slave labor as much as Southern Slaves did. Northern slaves changed so many things throughout time in a more Afro-American way. The Diverse development of Afro-American culture demonstrates to us the importance of time and space in the study of American slavery. Black people in America shared many important things. However, these commonalities took different shapes and meanings within the miscellaneous circumstances of the North American mainland. 

Thanks to Berlin and his essay Time, Space, and the Evolution of Afro-American Society on British Mainland North America and all his work we get to see how he addresses the history of slavery and emancipation as a labor historian. He insisting that slavery must be included as a central part of American labor history and in this essay, we get to see how he expanded to explore the history of culture, kinship, and social relations. We get to understand more about African American history due to Berlin’s primary documents. 

The image below shows how African American people struggle and made sacrifices in their lives to have a better one. Moving from classes to places to settle and embrace everything. African American people’s lives had been transformed and as time went by they have started gaining more rights but not enough as they, as we deserve. Looking hundreds of years back we get to see how African American people transformation and we get to see the development of an Afro-American culture that demonstrates to us the importance of time and space in the study of American slavery. 

Art by Ira Berlin

Work-Cited Page 

Berlin, Ira. The Changing Definition of African-American. 1 Feb. 2010, www.smithsonianmag.com/history/the-changing-definition-of-african-american-4905887/. 

Greene, Julie. “Ira Berlin (1941–2018): Perspectives on History: AHA.” Ira Berlin (1941–2018) | Perspectives on History | AHA, 1 Oct. 2018, www.historians.org/publications-and-directories/perspectives-on-history/october-2018/ira-berlin-%281941%E2%80%932018%29. 

Berlin, Ira. “Time, Space, and the Evolution of Afro-American Society on British Mainland North America.” The American Historical Review, vol. 85, no. 1, 1980, pp. 44–78. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/1853424. Accessed 8 Dec. 2020.

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