Drawing the Color Line Essay

“These words sank deep into my heart, stirred up sentiments within that lay slumbering, and called into existence an entirely new train of thought. It was a new and special revelation, explaining dark mysterious things, with which my youthful understanding had struggled, but struggled in vain. I now understood what had been to me a most perplexing difficulty – to wit, the white man’s power to enslave black men. It was a grand achievement, and I prized it highly. From that moment, I understood the pathway from slavery to freedom” (20).

Conditions were especially bad for African Americans like Equiano, who wasn’t seen as a human due to the color of his skin. He was treated poorly by not only the whites but as well as other Africans. His own people were the ones who took him and forced him to be a slave. He and other slaves were whipped, beaten, and only given enough food to still survive, which was very little. Equiano had it the worst, he was ripped away from his family and tortured for no good reason. Mary Rowlandson was somewhat the same story of being taken and separated from her family, this causing a lot of emotional damage, but her captors didn’t physically abuse her. Her captors being the Native Americans, who took Rowlandson as an American hostage. They treated her relatively well and the only physical suffering for her was lack of food, but not even the indians had a lot of food due to low supply of crops. On the completely other side of the spectrum, William Bradford and the others who first came to america with him, basically ‘tortured’ themselves. They did this by not arriving prepared when landing on this new land. Expecting a warm welcome from people who already lived there, shelters already made, and a plethora of food, and to their surprise none of those things were there for them. They did not bring many resources that would help them succeed in making a new colony, and really were quite

Africans were considered “better” slaves because they were helpless compared to the Indians who were at home in the Americas and could escape much easier than the blacks that were now alone in a strange place.

And in the cases of Alabama, there were at least 100,000 African American men between the 1890s and the 1930s were leased or sold by the state of Alabama to coal mines, iron ore mines, sawmills, timber harvesting camps, cotton plantations, turpentine stills, all across the state. And so at least 200,000 African Americans, just in Alabama, were forced into the system, just in the most informal ways. And there are very well documented records of thousands of Black men who died under these circumstances during that period of time. Stories of men like Jonathan Davis, who in the fall of 1901, left his cotton field trying to reach the home of his wife's parents, where she was being cared for and would soon die of an illness. He was trying to reach her before she died. And on his way to the town, which was 15 or 20 miles away where she was being taken care of, he was accosted on the road by a constable, and essentially is kidnapped from the roadway and sold to a white farmer a few days later for $45. This is something that is named in the book to dozens of people that happened to. It's clear some version of that sort of kidnapping happened to hundreds and hundreds of other African Americans. And again, all of that is just in Alabama, and there were versions of this going on in all of the

The slaves were needed for more tabacco production and the whites were eager for jobs.The colonist then turned to african slavery because it was cheaper for the owner of the slave and the slaves were not going to be paid.

The first African Americans that were put to work in Jamestown were not treated in the way that people traditionally think of early slavery. In fact they were treated just as the indentured servants that had come from England were treated. This does not mean that they were treated with any sympathy or given easy work, but that they just were not discriminated by the color of their skin. In the beginning of the 1600s all servants had the same dream, to one day be free. In 1641, a black slave by the name of Anthony Johnson, was freed and given his own land to start his new life as an American (Johnson et al, Africans, 39). At this point in time the only things that separated people were if you were an owner or a servant and if you were a Christian or not. At some point in the mid 1700s something changed the way that the colonists saw things. All of a sudden there was no longer equal treatment of white and black slaves, the darker the color of ones skin was the worse off their life became. In 1640, three slaves tried escaping to Maryland but were unsuccessful, when they were brought upon the court two of the

In Chapter 9, “Slavery Without Submission, Emancipation Without Freedom,” of A People’s History of the United States, Howard Zinn takes about the slave rebellions, abolition movement, the Civil War, and these effects on African Americans. Zinn included this chapter to explain the life of African Americans before and after the Civil War and their treatment accordingly. Howard Zinn explains how the life of an African American remained cruel and taken advantage of through explaining the life of a slave before the War and then the mentality that whites were better than blacks that continued after, seen through the effects of the Klu Klux Klan.

Slavery was a dark time in America’s past. Not only did slavery separate millions of families, it destroyed the white man’s reputation to African people. Many slave owners treated their slaves well, many did not. They forced their slaves to live in deplorable conditions. Malnutrition and overworking often led to death. If you were a slave, would you risk it all and try to run away? You might not have a choice if you wanted to stay alive.

During the late 1700s & early 1800s, there was an agricultural revolution in the U.S. that really benefited the south. Due to this revolution, the south heavily relied on slave labor and the demand for it went up. The cotton gin was invented and it leads to cotton becoming king. Two types of workers risen because of the industrial and agricultural revolution which were wage workers and slaves. Slaves were mostly used in the South and wage workers were used mostly in the North.

What does the increase of individuals who self-identify as multiracial mean for the color line as those who come from mixed-race grow up and have their own children? How will that affect racial categories? These questions are answered in article 11 titled Beyond Black and White: Remaking Race in America by Jennifer Lee and Frank D. Bean, in the book Rethinking the Color Line by Charles A. Gallagher.

The killings made by the slaves are saddening, too. Mutilating the whites and leaving their bodies lying is inhumane. It is such a shocking story. This book was meant to teach the reader on the inhumanity of slavery. It also gives us the image of what happened during the past years when slavery was practised.

“The Book of Negroes is a master piece, daring and impressive in its geographic, historical and human reach, convincing in its narrative art and detail, necessary for imagining the real beyond the traces left by history.” I completely agree with The Globe and Mail’s interpretation of this story. One could almost see the desolate conditions of the slave boats and feel the pain of every person brought into slavery. Lawrence Hill created a compelling story that depicts the hard ships, emotional turmoil and bravery when he wrote The Book of Negroes.

There is a myth that the European/Caucasian race have never been enslaved. The fact is that Arab slave traders owned all race of slaves. What differs between the groups of black and whites, is that after whites had been enslaved and during stuck together and from that overcame and rose up above the circumstances. Blacks on the other hand both during and after slavery never came together collectively for the betterment of the race. Blacks mainly are still affected by a plan that was put in place to ensure blacks never came together. This process was created by Willie Lynch in a letter and speech he delivered in 1712 on the bank of the James River in Virginia. You can see that the letter still plague the black community today.

While slavery was a horrific thing that led to the mistreatment of millions of black people, it had the power to last for centuries. When looking closely at historical accounts it becomes easier to see why this horrible practice was able to sustain for so long. One of the reasons was because the economy of Colonial America relied heavily on the labor of slaves. Farming, the slave trade itself, and the harsh treatment of slaves were all driven by the greed of slave owners. Another reason that slavery lasted so long was racism. During this time, the black population was considered inferior to the white population. This helped to promote the cruel behaviors that occurred in slavery. Lastly, many whites actually felt that the slaves were treated

The controversy of racism scorches Narrative of The Life of Frederick Douglass written by Frederick Douglass himself. Douglass unveils the atrocious truth about slavery that was hidden for so many years. Every beating, every death, every malicious act was all recorded for the people of the U.S. to finally see the error of our ways. The short essay, Slavery as a Mythologized Institution, explains how people in that time period justified the disgusting behavior that was demonstrated regularly. Religion and intellectual inferiority were concepts that were used to manipulate the minds of everyone around into believing that practicing slavery was acceptable. However a very courageous man, Frederick Douglass challenges those beliefs. Douglass debunks the mythology of slavery in his narrative by rebuking the romantic image of slavery with very disturbing imagery, promotes his own views on the intellectual belief of slaves, and exposes the “system” for promoting the disloyalty among slaves.