How Does Slavery Affect Us Today

Lemann states the purpose of this book is to answer the question “what kinds of lives black people might live in the South now depended on the freed slaves’ organizing abilities and on the reliability of their voting rights” (xi). The subtitle, The Last Battle of the Civil War, correctly states that although the Civil War had officially ended the battle stilled raged physically, politically, and through public sentiment. First, Lemann documents horrible accounts of violence against freed blacks. The casual observer views the underlying reasons for these attacks as simple racial hatred. However, Lemann connects the acts of violence to show an orchestrated movement intended to undermine both keys to the freed blacks’ quality of life, organizing abilities and voting rights.

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.

Aside from all the physical burdens of slavery that he faced on a daily basis, it was the psychological effects that caused him the greatest amount of detriment during his twenty-year enslavement. In the same regard, Douglass is able to profess that it was not only the slaves who incurred the damaging effects of slavery, but also the slaveholders. Slavery, in essence, is a destructive force that collectively corrupts the minds of slaveholders and weakens slaves’ intellects. In order to justify keeping an entire race of people enslaved, slaveholders claimed that blacks were inferior to whites, placing them on the same level as livestock and other animals. “There were horses and men, cattle and women, pigs and children, all holding the same rank in the scale of being, and were all subjected to the same narrow examination” (73).

In his book The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave, he exposed the horrors of slavery. Douglass tells of the atrocities of slavery, to expose the defense of the cruel atrocities by slaveholders, and to incite the Northern populace to exhort the abolishment of slavery. Frederick Douglass, in his autobiography, singles out the atrocities of the “Peculiar Institution”, from foul to barbarous. In The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass An American Slave, former slave turned abolitionist, Frederick Douglass (1845) states that many masters treated their slaves cruelly. Douglass (1845) tells of many instances of this inimical treatment.

Karenga defines the Trans-Atlantic slave trade as the “Holocaust of Enslavement,” which is a much more powerful designation of slavery. The slave trade incorporated the imprisonment, purchase, or discarding of an individual with intent to diminish the person to enslavement; this included all actions involved in the purchase of a slave with the intention of selling or exchanging the person (Karenga, 2010). Inequalities originating from the Trans-Atlantic slave trade continue to plague persons of African descent. Even today, African-Americans still feel the reverberations of slavery. These issues are not just the history of African slavery—it is the very heritage of African-Americans (Bogue, 1977).

The exploitation of their slaves, which were to be from Africa, was a huge business throughout North America. The business that was so profitable for the slave owners and slave traders played havoc for the slaves from Africa as families were divided and relationships were broken. After slavery was abolished it was not easily forgotten and the discrimination of the black population would stop in some areas of the United States. The hate and anger from oppressing white minority would continue and would expand into different areas and social groups well to present day. With information taken from Harriet Jacobs's Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl and a narrative Memories of Childhood's Slavery Days written by Annie L. Burton this paper will examine the life styles and views that slaves possessed during slavery and what life was ... ... middle of paper ... ...s of Childhood's Slavery Days, November 2000, (4 December 2003).

Not only did they suffer from those things, but they also had trouble with their identity once they moved on or was freed from slavery, that’s why we seen a lot of the former slaves changing their identity. Abolitionists were determined to educate the public on how badly slaves were being treated. They even argued the basic facts of Southern plantation life such as slave holders divided families, legalized rape, and did not recognize slave marriages as legitimate (Pierson, 2005). In the interregional slave trade, hundreds of thousands of slaves were move long distance from their birthplace and original homes as the slave economy migrated from the eastern seaboards to Louisiana, Arkansas, and Texas (Thornton... ... middle of paper ... ...ou loved the most to be with people you were never acquainted with and people that will treat you very unequally, it must have been a sad life, and we must all remember what those people had to go through. Works Cited Selling Slave Families Down the River.

The prejudice against black people dates a long way back into the history of the ancestors of the present day blacks and when the first came to the USA, as slaves. Although slavery was abolished black people were still frequently treated as second-class citizens and gave seemed to still have an image that meant they were not as superior as the whites. They were segregated on public transport and at various public places and constantly faced the humiliation of being put down by the whites. Racism occurs all over the world and can happen to anyone and will always exist, because people will always be prejudice. For some it may not be their fault, it may be the way they were brought up, or perhaps they had bad experiences themselves.

The documentary Slavery by Another Name embodies a time in history in which Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation freed the African American as slaves but they were not free from the society. “One of America’s most shameful chapters”, shines light on the injustices of the society in the South that included convict leasing, sharecropping, and peonage. African Americans labored against their own will since the whites were trying to put them back into slavery. The documentary shares with us the testimonies of the descendants, self-made men, slaves, and historians who open up to us an appalling period in America. Socially, economically, and politically the film does well portraying and describing the corrupt American system in the era between the Civil War and World War 2.

It depicts actual events in history based on one mans experience. That man is Frederick Douglass. He was born into slavery and was a slave for much of his life. His accounts of what happened to him show that slavery in the old south was an evil institution that turned humans into animals and an institution that dehumanized people to keep them ignorant. African Americans suffered tremendously during the appalling years of slavery.