Essay On Slavery In African Americans

“It was not color, but crime, not God, but man that afforded the true explanation of the existence of slavery; nor was I long in finding out another important truth, what man can make, man can unmake” (Douglass 59). In My Bondage and My Freedom, Fredrick Douglass explains in detail the harsh and cruel realties of slavery and how slavery was an institution that victimized not only slaves, but slave holders, and non-slave holding whites. Fredrick Douglass could not have been more right with his observation of slavery. In my opinion, slavery is not only an institution, but is a prime example of a corrupt business model that thrives on free labor, ultimate control, and wealth.

Slavery has been a major component of human civilization all throughout history. People turn to slavery for many reasons, such as fear of different ethnicities and fear that these new foreign people will take over land that is not theirs. The conditions under which slaves work and live varies greatly by the time and location of which the slaves lived. Slaves play a major role in their society and contribute greatly to their communities, often forming one of the largest masses of the population. Though the accuracy of the information from primary sources may be tainted with exaggeration and bias, it is easy to deduce from primary works the treatment of slaves and the working and living conditions surrounding them. According to many sources,

Why was Cruelty to the slaves' so popular?” Slaves face it every day of their lives, whether they deserve the punishment or not. The slaveholders find satisfaction in beating and whipping the slaves. Slavery abuse was very common in this time period. Cruelty was one of the biggest factors in the book “Narrative Of The Life of Frederick Douglass An American Slave”.

Starting from a slave’s birth, this cruel process leads to a continuous cycle of abuse, neglect, and inhumane treatment. To some extent, slave holders succeed because they keep most slaves so concerned with survival that they have no time or energy to consider freedom. This is particularly true for plantation slaves where the conditions of slave life are the most difficult and challenging. However, slave holders fail to realize the damage they inadvertently inflict on themselves by upholding slavery and enforcing these austere laws and attitudes.

Slave as defined by the dictionary means that a slave is a person who is the property of and wholly subject to another; a bond servant. So why is it that every time you go and visit a historical place like the Hampton-Preston mansion in Columbia South Carolina, the Lowell Factory where the mill girls work in Massachusetts or the Old town of Williamsburg Virginia they only talk about the good things that happened at these place, like such things as who owned them, who worked them, how they were financed and what life was like for the owners. They never talk about the background information of the lower level people like the slaves or servants who helped take care and run these places behind the scenes.

that treatment, and the conditions that lead to resistance by the slaves working in their various

The history of African-Americans has been a paradox of incredible triumph in the face of tremendous human tragedy. African-American persons were shown much discrimination and were treated as second class citizens in the colonies during the development of the nation. The first set men, women, and children to work in the colonies were indentured servants, meaning they were only required to work for a set amount of years before they received their freedom. Then, in 1619 the first black Africans came to Virginia. With no slave laws in place, they were initially treated as indentured servants, a source of free labor, and given the same opportunities for freedom dues as whites. However, slave laws were soon passed – in Massachusetts in

Enslaved people suffered extreme physical violence as – punishments for running away, failing to complete assigned tasks, visiting a spouse living on another plantation, learning to read, arguing with whites, working too slowly, possessing anti-slavery materials, or trying to prevent the sale of their relatives. By law, slaves were the personal property of their owners in all Southern states. Slaves suffered that images such as collared necks and red ribboned locks evoked vividly the apocalypse of the southern plantation.

Slavery has a lot of effects on African Americans today. History of slavery is marked for civil rights. Indeed, slavery began with civilization. With farming’s development, war could be taken as slavery. Slavery that lives in Western go back 10,000 years to Mesopotamia. Today, most of them move to Iraq, where a male slave had to focus on cultivation. Female slaves were as sexual services for white people also their masters at that time, having freedom only when their masters died.

In addition, the author also intends to emphasize his concern of the physical mistreatment of blacks in the period of slavery. This is done mainly through his presentation of the symbolism of the whip used to exert pain and brutality on the population of

Plantation owners thought that this extreme discipline would make the slaves too scared to rebel. In South Carolina it was said that "a slave owner would put nails in a barrel sticking out on the inside of the barrel, then put the slave in and roll him/her down a very long and steep hill. Another punishment slave owners used was to whip their slaves. Other slave owners in Virginia smoked their slaves. This involved whipping them and putting them in a tobacco smokehouse".("life of a slave" thinkquest) Other punishments were getting beaten with various objects such as a chair, broom, tongs, shovel, shears, knife handles, the heavy end of a woman’s shoe, and an oak club.("life of a slave" thinkquest) Although slaves lived terrible lives, they found hope in religion. Many converted to Christianity which did not please many whites.

The hegemonic principles established and instated by institutional violence indubitably form the very core of the slave system that abuses the slaves and destroys their humanity. It is the weapon "with which the supremacy of white values are affirmed and the aggressiveness which has permeated the victory of these values over the ways of life and of thought of the native" (Fanon 43). Slaves were left to starve and were beaten for minor faults. Slave owners were afraid of their slaves who outnumbered them, they resorted to violence to force their slaves into submission. Violence has usually guided the hegemonic power when destroying the slaves' lives, internally and externally, thereof slaves' violent resistance has been mainly targeted to the

     Slavery in America stems well back to when the new world was first discovered and was led by the country to start the African Slave Trade-Portugal. The African Slave Trade was first exploited for plantations

Back in the time period of slavery the Master’s could hurt and torture their slaves without anybody caring except the slaves. I think they did that because they didn't want the slaves to rebel so they would keep them in line by hitting, whipping and cutting off fingers and toes. I think that this is completely horrible because they Master’s did not think of their slaves as people they thought of them as livestock. I think this quote said by Helen Suzman sums up what I am trying to say “I stand for simple justice, equal opportunity and human rights. The indispensable elements in a democratic society - and well worth fighting for.

Today, as in the past, slavery is rooted in a notion of the human person, which allows him or her to be treated as an object. Whenever sin corrupts the human heart and distances us from our Creator and our neighbours, the latter are no longer regarded as beings of equal dignity, as brothers or sisters sharing a common humanity, but rather as objects. Whether by coercion or deception, or by physical or psychological duress, human persons created in the image and likeness of God are deprived of their freedom, sold and reduced to being the property of others. They are treated as means to an end.