During the course of the African-American slave trade, slaves experienced a significant loss of culture and customs native to their homelands. When abducted from their homes and brought to their new land, slave-owners often forced their slaves to take new names that were more recognizable to the Caucasian population. The main character in The Book of Negroes, Aminata, is referred to by several names throughout the course of her life. Her African name, Aminata Diallo, has several variations including Miss Diallo or just Aminata. While aboard the slave ship, the ship's doctor gives her the name Mary; while living as a slave, she is referred to as Miss Dee, Meena Dee, or Meena. Those who found themselves in captivity also adopted a new language …show more content…
Christian missionaries and owners of slaves tried to erase African religious beliefs altogether. As a result, "in the United States, many African religious rites were fused into one" (Blassingame, John). Aminata was influenced not only by her father's religion as a Muslim, but also from the religion of one of her owners. Aminata identified with Solomon Lindo's Judaism: "The Jews in Charles Town had taught one of their slaves to butcher meat according to their beliefs… Solomon Lindo and his wife also avoided pork. Perhaps he was right in saying that we were similar" (Hill 197). Both Aminata and the Lindo family did not eat pork due to their religious beliefs, however to slaves who did not practice the same beliefs, this would have come as a culture shock. Aminata was also immersed in the Methodist church because of her friendship with Daddy Moses, although she never converted to that religion: "'Have you taken Jesus into your arms?' he asked me. 'My arms have been busy, and Jesus hasn't come looking'" (Hill 317). Aminata, along with the millions of slaves living through the slave trade, were exposed to a diverse number of religions; it was difficult to identify with and strictly practice one religion. In her final years, Aminata admits that "I have not embraced a God as might be imagined by a Muslim, Jew, or Christian,"(Hill 233) and a majority of slaves felt the same. The refusal to conform to American or Caucasian religious beliefs, but the inability to practice their own purely out of fear, left thousands of African-Americans believing in no religion
When reading about the institution of slavery in the United States, it is easy to focus on life for the slaves on the plantations—the places where the millions of people purchased to serve as slaves in the United States lived, made families, and eventually died. Most of the information we seek is about what daily life was like for these people, and what went “wrong” in our country’s collective psyche that allowed us to normalize the practice of keeping human beings as property, no more or less valuable than the machines in the factories which bolstered industrialized economies at the time. Many of us want to find information that assuages our own personal feelings of discomfort or even guilt over the practice which kept Southern life moving
Aminata Diallo is an eleven years old African girl, when her life changes completely, as she goes from a beloved daughter to an orphan that is captured and enslaved. Aminata is shown in the novel Someone Knows My Name by Lawrence Hill as a strong young protagonist that is able to survive the odyssey around the world first as a slave and later as a free activist agent of the British. In the book, her various stages of her life are always connected with the clothes that she is wearing or the lack of clothes and show the degree of dehumanization that accompanies slavery.
10. Richmond, Douglas. “The Legacy of African Slavery in Colonial Mexico, 1519-1810.” Journal of Popular Culture 35, no. 2 (2001): 1-17.
Laurence Hill’s novel, The Book of Negroes, uses first-person narrator to depict the whole life ofAminata Diallo, beginning with Bayo, a small village in West Africa, abducting from her family at eleven years old. She witnessed the death of her parents with her own eyes when she was stolen. She was then sent to America and began her slave life. She went through a lot: she lost her children and was informed that her husband was dead. At last she gained freedom again and became an abolitionist against the slave trade. This book uses slave narrative as its genre to present a powerful woman’s life.She was a slave, yes, but she was also an abolitionist. She always held hope in the heart, she resist her dehumanization.
Kyles, Perry L.. "Resistance and Collaboration: Political Strategies within the Afro-Carolinian Slave Community, 1700-1750." The Journal of African History 93: 497-508.
Where the Negroes Are Master: An African Port in the Era of the Slave Trade is a book written by Randy J. Sparks, who is Professor of History at Tulane University. On the Gold Coast during the eighteenth-century, Annamaboe was known as the largest slave trading post. The trading post was a home to very successful African merchants who had an odd partnership with some people in Europe. That made the town and the people that lived in the town, an extremely important part of the Atlantic’s exchange web. The port of Annamaboe was located in present day Ghana. The port brought the merchants into contact with people from the Royal African Company, Rhode Island Rum Men, European slave traders, and Africans who were captured from neighboring nations, daily. Since the leaders of Annamaboe were
Abstract from Essay The reader can contemplate the passage of Du Bois' essay to substitute the words "colored" and "Negro" with African-American, Nigger, illegal alien, Mexican, inner-city dwellers, and other meanings that articulate people that are not listed as a majority. Du Bois' essay is considered a classic because its words can easily reflect the modern day. -------------------------------------------- The Souls of Black Folk broadens the minds of the readers, and gives the reader a deeper understanding into the lives of people of African heritage.
As the United States grew, the institution of slavery became a way of life in the southern states, while northern states began to abolish it. While the majority of free blacks lived in poverty, some were able to establish successful businesses that helped the Black community. Racial discrimination often meant that Blacks were not welcome or would be mistreated in White businesses and other establishments. A comparison of the narratives of Douglass and Jacobs demonstrates the full range of demands and situations that slaves experienced, and the mistreatment that they experienced as well. Jacobs experienced the ongoing sexual harassment from James Norcom, just like numerous slave women experienced sexual abuse or harassment during the slave era. Another issue that faced blacks was the incompetence of the white slave owners and people. In ...
Between 1619 and 1862 it was very common to come across free men or enslaved blacks in America, however, it was something special to encounter a man both free and black during this time. Although, as Frado soon learned, “ Freedom from slavery did not mean equality of citizenship” ( Higginbotham 160). The mindset of the elite, white ruling class was to discourage free blacks in every conceivable way, “ not only have we created laws to expel them at will, but we hamper them in a thousand ways.” ( Tocquville). The communities of free A...
Raboteau, Albert J. Slave Religion: The "invisible Institution" in the Antebellum South. New York: Oxford UP, 1978. Print.
Boser, Ulrich. "The Black Man's Burden." U.S. News & World Report 133.8 (2002): 50. Academic
In his book, The Miseducation of the Negro, Carter G. Woodson addresses many issues that have been and are still prevalent in the African American community. Woodson believed that in the midst of receiving education, blacks lost sight of their original reasons for becoming educated. He believed that many blacks became educated only to assimilate to white culture and attempt to become successful under white standards, instead of investing in their communities and applying their knowledge to help other blacks.
Deborah Gray White’s Ar’n’t I a Woman? details the grueling experiences of the African American female slaves on Southern plantations. White resented the fact that African American women were nearly invisible throughout historical text, because many historians failed to see them as important contributors to America’s social, economic, or political development (3). Despite limited historical sources, she was determined to establish the African American woman as an intricate part of American history, and thus, White first published her novel in 1985. However, the novel has since been revised to include newly revealed sources that have been worked into the novel. Ar’n’t I a Woman? presents African American females’ struggle with race and gender through the years of slavery and Reconstruction. The novel also depicts the courage behind the female slave resistance to the sexual, racial, and psychological subjugation they faced at the hands of slave masters and their wives. The study argues that “slave women were not submissive, subordinate, or prudish and that they were not expected to be (22).” Essentially, White declares the unique and complex nature of the prejudices endured by African American females, and contends that the oppression of their community were unlike those of the black male or white female communities.
When one thinks of slavery, they may consider chains holding captives, beaten into submission, and forced to work indefinitely for no money. The other thing that often comes to mind? Stereotypical African slaves, shipped to America in the seventeenth century. The kind of slavery that was outlawed by the 18th amendment, nearly a century and a half ago. As author of Modern Slavery: The Secret World of 27 Million People, Kevin Bales, states, the stereotypes surrounding slavery often confuse and blur the reality of slavery. Although slavery surely consists of physical chains, beatings, and forced labor, there is much more depth to the issue, making slavery much more complex today than ever before.
The Souls of Black Folk by W.E.B Dubois is a influential work in African American literature and is an American classic. In this book Dubois proposes that "the problem of the Twentieth Century is the problem of the color-line." His concepts of life behind the veil of race and the resulting "double-consciousness, this sense of always looking at one's self through the eyes of others," have become touchstones for thinking about race in America. In addition to these lasting concepts, Souls offers an evaluation of the progress of the races and the possibilities for future progress as the nation entered the twentieth century.