My name is Mukua-kulua (warrior or brave one). My father gave me this name, because I fight everything; I am never scared of nothing. My home is in the kingdom of N’dongo. I was not yet born when some white man, came to my kingdom and start changing, the way that my tribe dressed, eat, talk and teaching how to worship their God. All members of my tribe had to learn these new things, and work for these white men. We were being colonized, as we had to learn and assimilate their habits. After that the white men who lived in my kingdom and my tribe lived all together. They learned some of our rituals, and expertise to hunt and survive in the African savannahs; it was a fusion of the white men habits and my tribe habits. Even though, this was our land there had being secession. The white men dominated our lands with their religion, language, and habits. Soon enough, most of the tribes around us were talking and living like them. We had no idea that our life’s were about to change again; our families were about to be apart, and many of our people were going to be killed, has they were expulse from their home.
Everything started a few years ago. It was a warm and beautiful night in Africa; the dark blue sky was full of stars… and those were the last things I remember before I woke up in a cold and wet floor. I do not know where I was, or why I my hands were tight behind my back.
However, now I was scared, as I was listening to women and babies crying, as I could see my friends bleeding and hurt. What happened? Where was I? At that point, I knew that I was far from home. The white men took us away from our land. We had being expulse from our kingdom, to some other place that we did not know.
A few days had past, and we were still in that dark, wet, and cold place. They gave us food and water, but we are very scared of these white men. Later I found that we had being sold to work for other white men. The dark, wet, and cold place was a boat.
The history of this tragic story begins a little before the actual beginning of “Little Africa”. This story begins after slavery has supposedly ended, but a whole new era of cruelty, inhuman, and unfair events have taken place, after the awful institution of slavery when many of my people were taken from their home, beaten, raped, slaughter and dehumanized and were treated no better than livestock, than with the respect they deserved as fellow man. This story begins when the Jim Crow laws were put into place to segregate the whites from the blacks.
This is the account of an ex-slave by the name of William Barker who now resides in Bethany, AL. He is approximately 95 years old and lives in a little shack with a plot of land. He has worked for some local townsfolk doing some grounds keeping and gardening since he was freed when he was 20. But for the most part, Barker keeps to himself. He has no wife and no children. He is only 5 foot 4 and may weigh about 145 lbs. As a slave he worked as a gardner, and later learned to cook, but soon thereafter was freed. Gardening is all he seems to know. However, he seems very proficient at hunting. He says that is the only way he keep alive, living off what God gives him from the land and water. He was son to Frances William and Eliza William. His father died in the war. Because of his size and ability to cook, William Barker did not go to war. His mammy died within weeks of being free due to starvation. Here is his account
This essay will attempt to answer four questions that will give us a better understanding of what the slaves themselves thought about the peculiar institution of slavery. The four questions being: 1) How did slaves feel about their masters and /or mistresses? 2) How did slaves feel about their work? Their families? Their religion? 3) How did they feel about freedom? 4) How did slaves feel about themselves?
The scene from night that I can remember most vividly is the scene in which Elie is reviving 25 lashes from the Kapo because he laughed when had seen the Kapo with the young polish girl. I remember this scene the most because it reminded me of when I had read “To be a slave by Julius Lester” and the slaves had received a certain amount of lashes of whips for doing something so minor like catching their “master” with a slave girl, talking back, or saying something considered disrespectful. It seemed so gruesome to me at the moment, Elie receiving so many lashes that he couldn't even feel anymore, he just went numb, numb to the point where he didn't even know when the lashing was done; as he was to pass out from the pain that he had endured he
My name is Agy and currently I am on board a slave ship. I’ve decided to create a diary and fill it with important experiences so in the event that I ever meet my family again, I’ll be able to share my experiences with them. I belonged to the Dan tribe of Africa. My people lived south of Diamonde territory and we were protected by young but brave warriors against invading neighbors. We grew yams, rice, manioc, taro, bananas and maize. These were our primary crops. I was in the process of cutting bananas along with some of my people and my parents when I heard a sudden uproar coming from the village. From a distant, I could see the villagers scampering and running toward the plantation. Following them were the loud bursts of gunshots and the smell of burnt gunpowder. I refocused my attention and between all of the screaming I could hear Mother calling my name but with everyone approaching, pushing and shoving, I was unable to find her. The white people entered the plantation on huge horses armed with their guns and whips and even nets. They were shooting at and trampling my people while the ones on foot, threw the nets over the ones on the ground to capture them as if they were wild animals. Within the blink of an eye, one of the white men were approaching me quicker than expected. And as I turned in an attempt to escape, I felt a spine numbing blow to my back. I instantly fell to the ground. All I was able to see after that was a large boot coming toward my face. I felt my body being covered with some sort of material and someone began dragging me by my foot. Eventually, I woke up to the sound of shackles being fastened together. Chained were people from my village along with some who I have never seen before. The only voices I he...
A source created on the 12th of August in 1797 depicts an advertisement for the sale of a 22 year-old female slave, who has a nine month old child and is being offered at the purchaser’s option. The primary source was published by the ‘Rising Sun’ as a newspaper clipping. African Americans were objectified as shown by the description ‘A remarkable smart healthy Negro Wench’ and families were often separated by the buyer’s wish. A case study journal by Steven Mintz from Columbia University on ‘Childhood and Transatlantic Slavery’ informed that infant and child mortality rates were twice as high among slave children compared to southern white children
The slave narratives of the ante-bellum time period have come across numerous types of themes. Much of the work concentrates on the underlining ideas beneath the stories. In the narratives, fugitives and ex-slaves appealed to the humanity they shared with their readers during these times, men being lynched and marked all over and women being the subject of grueling rapes. "The slave narrative of Frederick Douglas" and "Harriet Jacobs: Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl" themes come from the existence of the slaves morality that they are forced compromise to live.
I find myself waking up in the middle of an ocean with no people to be found. Floating around on a half broken surfboard, which was once my dad’s. My fingers are wrinkled up like dry prunes from the saltwater. All I can remember is my mom being drunk and beating me. I still feel the sting of her fists across my back and stomach. How I got here, I still don’t know. I’m looking. The ocean disappears across the horizon in all directions. Then I think for a moment, What about my sister.
“I'm not gonna risk you getting hurt again I hate it,”Tristan yelled after he already yelled something else.
Like Shylock in Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice, the black slave women are dehumanized by the other characters in Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s “The Runaway Slave at Pilgrim’s Point” and Harriet A. Jacobs’ Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl Written by Herself. Sexually harassed by their white masters, these slave women are forbidden to express the human emotion of love. Pressured into a shamed motherhood, they cannot love their children in the same ways that a white mother can. Moreover, slave women are treated like chattels. The black women in Browning and Jacobs’ works are oppressed sexually, forced into unwanted motherhoods, and stripped of their identities. Yet, because they face these cruelties with courage and dignity, these black slaves emerge as heroines of their own fates.
Slave narrative, an account of the life, or a major portion of the life, of a fugitive or former slave, either written or orally related by the slave personally. Slave narratives comprise one of the most influential traditions in American literature, shaping the form and themes of some of the most celebrated and controversial writing, both in fiction and in autobiography, in the history of the United States. The vast majority of American slave narratives were authored by African Americans, but African-born Muslims who wrote in Arabic, the Cuban poet Juan Francisco Manzano, and a handful of white American sailors taken captive by North African pirates also penned narratives of their enslavement during the 19th century. From
Slave narratives were made to show how big of an impact slavery can be to a human being, their purpose was to show their thoughts, and share their feelings with the world. The narratives give much more than just an insight on what they thought but let people feel the pain they felt within their life, people can compare their ideas to the writers. Much of these ideas could branch out to other situations in the world of the slave and could be used to help piece together a solution to an issue that being experienced throughout a country to a single soul somewhere in the world. These narratives helps us understand a lot more than we can actually
The inhumane treatment of slaves in America permanently damaged the psyche of the African American race which endured a considerable amount of damage due to slavery. The damage that slaves received was administered through countless horrible practices done by slave owners. These practices range from physical abuse to lasting psychological damage. Also, slavery lasted for 245 years causing multiple generations of African Americans were enslaved. This means these practices were engraved into slaves making a change to the African American race as a whole an inevitability. Slavery’s deadly grip on the African American race caused changes to occur that have become threaded into the dna of every African American. Slavery led to the destruction of
A slave is defined as a person who is the legal property of another and is forced to obey them. Slavery took many Africans from the West and sold them to different slave masters who would work their entire lives off, unless they could buy or were given freedom. The majority of slaves lived on large plantations where they were poorly treated, stripped of all basic rights, and went through hell on earth. Slavery for the white man was a great thing, where they felt higher and got work done and made profit for free. The daily life of a slave was treacherous, sickening, and cruel through poor conditions, harsh masters, and lack of rights given.
The word “slavery” brings back horrific memories of human beings. Bought and sold as property, and dehumanized with the risk and implementation of violence, at times nearly inhumane. The majority of people in the United States assumes and assures that slavery was eliminated during the nineteenth century with the Emancipation Proclamation. Unfortunately, this is far from the truth; rather, slavery and the global slave trade continue to thrive till this day. In fact, it is likely that more individuals are becoming victims of human trafficking across borders against their will compared to the vast number of slaves that we know in earlier times. Slavery is no longer about legal ownership asserted, but instead legal ownership avoided, the thought provoking idea that with old slavery, slaves were maintained, compared to modern day slavery in which slaves are nearly disposable, under the same institutionalized systems in which violence and economic control over the disadvantaged is the common way of life. Modern day slavery is insidious to the public but still detrimental if not more than old American slavery.