User:Micahabresch/sandbox

Sandboxes for Articles Being Created:

User:Micahabresch/sandbox-slavecodes

User:Micahabresch/sandbox-scslavecodes

User:Micahabresch/sandbox-nyslavecodes

User:Micahabresch/sandbox-slavenarratives

Original:

Slave codes

Article Selection

Freedom of Movement for Slaves and Free Blacks (3 articles)

Throughout Wikipedia, there is little mention of the restrictions on travel of slaves and free blacks throughout the Americas. Firstly, let me state that there were such restrictions, many codified into law and others built more out of custom. The details of the laws would be the result of later research, but they should be covered. As to why this relates to travel writing, it's slightly tangential, but travel restrictions did influence the travel writing of slaves.

My intent (if I pursue this topic) is to modify several articles and create at least one article. What follows is a bit of a best-case, as research (in particular, several states do not have their legal records preserved from that time) and time restrictions likely will prevent all of it from coming together, but this is the target all the same:

Freedom of Movement Under United States Law

This article has no historical section describing travel restrictions on slaves and free blacks in the south. As there were quite a few such restrictions, and these were some of the largest historical issues of freedom of movement in the United States, there should be a section on this.

Slave Codes

Laws regarding slaves in the Americas are already included in this article, but the quality is not especially high. There is a list-like collection of some sets of laws that is far from comprehensive, the scope doesn't cover the entirety of the Americas, just the southern United States, and what is there includes nothing about travel restrictions, which are quite important to that actual fact of being a slave.

Assuming research supports it, a cleaned-up article would include (aside from the intro) the following: A section generally describing the form of slave restrictions, not referring to a specific region, perhaps with subsections for the most significant laws. A subsection there are things that were practices but not laws. A section that breaks down into subsections by region explaining what particular laws each region had. When possible, these subsections would include some timeline data as to when the laws began/ended.

Passports

This article is already quite bloated and does not need a major section, so this would just include an explanatory sentence of the internal passports in question (that subsection does exist) and a link to the following.

Slave and Free-Black Travel Documentation

I am, of yet, uncertain of a proper title for this, the above being my best effort, although I think that is too long and awkward. The concept here is that the passports that slaves used to travel internally within a region, whether in the form of a slave tag or a master's signed document, were important physical objects involved in slavery, yet Wikipedia doesn't even mention them. A search for Slave Tag results in zero results.

Fugitive Slave Laws

This article is very focused on the specific fugitive slave acts that passed or failed to pass. I don't intend to change that, although there may be cause to include a link to the other sections as part of the historical context of the fugitive slave laws being passed.

The Contact Zone

This topic is a little less developed than the topic on the reverse, in part because the scope of the edits would be smaller. The long and the short of it is that Wikipedia gives only the barest coverage of a fairly important concept to historiography, particularly to history focused on travel writing. There is only one specific article of relevance, as follows:

The Contact Zone (theoretical concept)

This article is six paragraphs long, two paragraphs for its influence on education, a single paragraph for other sections. This needs a full description of the actual theoretical concept that conveys its nuance more completely and includes all of the key terms (for example, the term "anti-conquest" which Pratt makes a point of defining is never mentioned) and their explanations.

Further sections would cover the impacts of this concept on scholarship in general, and on counterpoints or supporting arguments made by other scholars. Depending on what's out there, some links from other pages might also be required. This would all be the result of further research.

Likely, some would need to be added to the article on Mary Louise Pratt, but that would in no way be a focus.

Planned Articles to Edit

Freedom of movement under United States law: This article has no historical section describing travel restrictions on slaves and free blacks in the south. As there were quite a few such restrictions, and these were some of the largest historical issues of freedom of movement in the United States, there should be a section on this.

Slave codes: There is no mention of travel restrictions on this page, either, even though this was an important part of the way slaves were restricted from freely leaving the south. I know for a certainty that slave tags and masters' notes to prove a right of travel off of a plantation were used throughout the south (the tags only a few cities, the notes more widely), and I believe there were other restrictions, as well. In addition to the lack of that topic, the page is sloppily laid out (looks like a list of copied codes for most of it) and generally needs to be improved.

There currently is no article on Slave Tags. These are a distinct physical remnant of slavery in the Southern United States, and they deserve some mention. I'm not entirely certain as to the title the article should have, as it should likely be included with other legally-required slave papers. This is really a set of internal passports, as they allow slaves to move about the country without being arrested as a runaway, but I don't think it rises to the level of being a full subsection on the already-bloated Passport article.

The Contact Zone: The article on this is short, with only the vaguest overview of what the contact zone is and its implications on scholarship. The section "Purpose of the Contact Zone" is literally two sentences. On the whole, the article would need to be re-written.

The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano and Sons of Africa: The article on Equiano's autobiography is largely just a summary, and while there's a large section on the controversy of whether or not he was actually born in Africa, there's no section describing the impacts of the work when it was released. Relatedly, Equiano was a member of the Sons of Africa, which is little more than a stub of an article (4 total paragraphs) and could likely be expanded.

Article Evaluations

In reviewing Travel literature, I noted that there is no mention of a "Contact Zone", which should probably at least be a reference in the "See also" section. I also followed through to the List of travel books and noted that it does not include Equiano, Erauso, or Staden.

In reviewing Catalina de Erauso, I found it generally good, although there is a discrepancy with dates due to a lack of clarification of what birth date is being used, and a few sentences at the end are awkwardly phrased to the point of being unclear. Most of the links are to Spanish sources, so I can't actually check if they're useful. In addition to all that, the whole article refers to him as female, which I am doubtful matches the wikipedia policy to "Give precedence to self-designation as reported in the most up-to-date reliable sources", but I'd have to be able to read the Spanish personally to make a statement about how his autobiography refers to himself.