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African American History Essay

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Slavery began in the late 16th century to early 18th century. Africans were brought to American colonies by white masters to come and work on their plantations in the South. They were treated harshly with no payments for all their hard work. In addition, they lived under harsh living conditions, and this led to their resistance against these harsh conditions. The racism towards the African Americans who were slaves was at its extreme as they did not have any rights; no civil nor political rights. The conditions were worse for the slaves, and they decided to resist in order to free themselves from the slavery institution. African slaves used various strategies of resistance to slavery. According to Hine, Hine, and Harrold (66), “such …show more content…

This helped them to meet, and educate themselves on how to be set free from the slavery institution. In addition, the slaves also used ways like being ignorant, malingering, and slow while working so as to free themselves from slavery. In addition, they could also feign sickness so as not to work and gain relief from the harsh working conditions. The slaves could do all these in order to be alienated from their masters, and at least have a rest from the heavy work loads. Some slaves even used extreme forms of day-to day acts like suicide, arson, self mutilation, and even murder of their masters and mistresses. Slaves could go to an extent of taking poison, cutting of their fingers, arms, legs, and toes just to avoid working. They poisoned, injured and murdered their masters in desperate hopes of getting freedom from slavery, and the harsh treatments they were receiving. The slaves used rebellions or anti-slavery movements as a form of resistance against slavery. However, the result of slave insurrections was mass executions, and many of them avoided these rebellions for the fear of being executed. The famous insurrections in the American history were the Gabriel Prossey's conspiracy in 1800, Nat Turner's Rebellion in 1831, and the Stono Rebellion of 1739. Among these rebellions, only the Nat

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