Remember Me, by Charles Joyner

Remember me is a description of unskilled and skilled work on plantations, how rice was grown and harvested, and the customs of the slaves on the Georgia Coast. Joyner depicts the life of slavery from the Masters, slave, and outside parities to a view seldom seen in the education system today. In His book, Remember Me, Charles Joyner relates the slave owner and slave to each other because each needed one another for survival on a daily basis. Joyner explains how some masters particularly cared for their slaves with one example being from Reverend Colcok Jones, “Tell all the howdye for me, (19)” and other forms of greetings when away from the plantation. However, Joyner also goes into great detail of how some masters mistreated their slaves along with their mistresses. Joyner explains that the Butler’s mistress beat the slaves routinely, and as Fanny Kemble “On the first morning of her arrival amongst us, by beating severely, with a raw cow-hide, the black girl who nursed the infant, because the child cried. (20)” Many historians believe the reason lying behind this was because the plantation owners were having explicit affairs with other slaves, and the wives of Plantation owners were not oblivious to this fact. On one hand, most mistresses felt that the slaves were inferior to the white race, so therefore, beat the slaves without a cause. It was common practice, during the slave period in Georgia, that slave owners beat their slaves. On the Contrary, one might also see that some plantation owners, very few, actually cared for their slaves with great compassion and loved their slaves as their own family.

As the punitive treatment of slavery carried on, the life of the slave on the Georgia Coast was demanding and extremely...

... middle of paper ...

...mselves. Slaves told stories of how their masters cared for them and made sure they were taking care of, had all the food they needed, and also how some of them had time where they could escape and get away from the reality that they were held against their will. However, slaves also left behind horrific stories of beatings, lynching’s, and of rape their owners did to them. What Remember Me attempts to bring out is the good and the bad of slavery, the cruel harshness one had to endure, and the love and compassion few owners gave to their slaves. In doing this Charles Joyner received a lot of criticism against his statements, but what he is credited with is bringing out a new light in slavery alongside the Georgia Coast few had ever seen.

Works Cited

Joyner, C. (2011). Remember me: Slave life in costal Georgia. Athens, Georgia: The University of Georgia Press.