American Slavery Images

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Recommended: The role of race in US slavery

American slavery begins when the first African slaves were brought to North America in 1619 . Throughout the 17th and 18th century, this continued. Images of slavery were everywhere. Relationship between white men and slaves shown that slavery was an accepted part of everyday life. In the one image, slaves are being auction and the second image a slave is being branded. Specifically, in the first image slaves are being auction and the second image a slave is being branded.
In the first image, slaves who are being sold. The auctioneer is standing on a barrel so he can see over the podium, but this shows that he feels like he’s superior. No one really is paying attention to him. Some of the crowd, and buyers are looking at the female slaves. …show more content…

White men don’t even see them as people. The white masters look comfortable like they have done this (branded slaves and been to an auction) plenty of times, so this suggests it was a commonplace in that society. In both images (slaves) have a child clinging to them. In the first image, a woman is even nursing a child. That shows that the children have to go everywhere with them or until a certain age. In the images you can see that the whites feel that they are more powerful than the slaves. They have their heads in the air and they are dressed better. The women in the images aren’t fighting back. Perhaps, they (slaves) came to terms with being slaves. This suggests that it had become so normalized.
Another interpretation could be, the slaves are not fighting back because they are okay with being a slave. They don’t know how to take care of themselves. The white men know slaves will die on their own. Often slaves were born into slavery. During that time, you didn’t have a choice to be an individual. For example, if your father was a slave owner, you would be one, so if your mother is a slave, you would become one too. So, if that is what they were born into that

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