The Is Not A Story Of Slavery, And Evidence From Close Reading

Throughout the book, The Origins of Slavery, the author, Betty Woods, depicts how religion and race along with social, economic, and political factors were the key factors in determining the exact timing that the colonist’s labor bases of indentured Europeans would change to involuntary West African servitude. These religion and racial differences along with the economic demand for more labor played the key roles in the formation of slavery in the English colonies. When the Europeans first arrived to the Americas in the late sixteenth century, at the colony of Roanoke, the thought of chattel slavery had neither a clear law nor economic practice with the English. However by the end of that following century, the demand for slaves in the

Students are taught in most schools that slavery ended with President Abraham Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation. However after reading Douglas Blackmon’s Slavery by Another Name I am clearly convinced that slavery continued for many years afterward. It is shown throughout this book that slavery did not end until 1942, this is when the condition of what Blackmon refers to as "neoslavery" began.

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.

Slavery has been around for a very long time. However, it is not always how it seems or put out to be. Like the Barbarians, a Greek slave, for example. Their inability to speak Greek indicated their slave status because it kept them from talking back to their masters. This has lead the Greeks to consider otherness a characteristic of slaves. And in the 18th century, slave trade is just another trade for merchants and people involved, like the fact Europeans actually obtained African slaves by trading for them in exchange for goods; usually like guns or metal tools; and for those Africans, slaves were a form of property and a very valuable one.

Ophelia Settle Egypt, informally known as Ophie, was an African American woman ahead of her time. She attained the educational status of less than one percent of the American population, was liberal and accepting of others despite the criticism around her, fought to end racism, worked independently of her husband, and believed in limiting family growth. All of Egypt’s beliefs and lifetime achievements represent a new type of woman: a woman who refuses to assimilate to her gender stereotype of weak, inferior, and domestic. Egypt dedicated her life to social work through various activities. She worked as a sociologist, researcher, teacher, director of organizations, and social worker at different times in her life. Egypt’s book, The Unwritten History of Slavery (1968), and the Planned Parenthood Clinic in Southeast Washington D.C. named after her represent Egypt’s legacy and how one person is capable of social change.

In 1928 Ulrich B. Phillips wrote an argumentative essay about the reasons for the massive support that slavery received from both slaveowners and Southerners who didn’t possess slaves. The essay was well-received and supported by critics in the 1930-s. However, closer to 1950-s critics started doubting the objectivity of Phillip’s writing. It’s important to note that Ulrich B. Phillips is a white historian from the South, writing from a perspective of a white Southerner. When he was writing his article he failed to step back from his bias and provide fully objective support for the main theme of his argument, setting a doubt to the reliability of his work.

Blassingame, John W. The Slave Community: Plantation Life in the Antebellum South. New York: Oxford University Press, 1972.

(1) The use of natural dialect can be seen throughout the slave narrative interviews through words and phrases used that were common during the period of slavery, but are not used today. One example can be seen in the dialect used by former slave Mama Duck, “Battlin stick, like dis. You doan know what a battling stick is? Well, dis here is one.” Through incomplete sentences and unknown words the natural dialect of the time can be seen. Unfamiliar words such as shin-plasters, meaning a piece of paper currency or a promissory note regarded as having little or no value. Also, geechees, used to describe a class of Negroes who spoke Gullah. Many examples can be seen throughout the “Slave Narratives”

Slavery has always been viewed as one of the most scandalous times in American history. It may seem that the entire institution of slavery has been categorized as white masters torturing defenseless African Americans. However, not every slave has encountered this experience. In this essay I will focus on the life of two former slaves Harriet Smith and Mr. George Johnson and how in some cases their experience were similar as well as different in other aspects. The negative aspects of slave life were unquestionably heinous and for that reason especially, it is also important to also reveal the lives of slaves whom were treated fairly and with respect.

So many people wanted slaves, especially in the South. They had more farms than they could handle on their own. Northern owners wanted them because they would have to do less work. Very few owners treated their slaves nicely and paid them to do work around the house. They would not be treated like family but would get treated a whole lot better than your “typical slave.” Those kinds of circumstances occurred more in the Northern states than the Southern states.

In American history, every event and person plays a part in the future. For example, rich plantation owners helped America advance their economy. However, that would not have been at all possible without the help of their slaves. The time and institution of slavery is a time of historical remembrance. It played a primary role during the seventeenth, eighteenth, and nineteenth centuries. The treatment, labor conditions, and personal stories of these slaves’ treatment and labor conditions are all widely discussed around the world to this day.

Throughout literature, the slave narrative has become quite commonplace, and while there are only so many ways for an author to distinguish their work from the rest of these narratives Yaa Gyasi does just this with “Homegoing”. “Homegoing” is a narrative with intense emotional depth geared toward depicting the strong cultural roots of differing tribes in the African continent and the many tribulations they face through the family lineage of two sisters separated at birth. Over the span of the narrative, this family tree allows for the story to traverse through time in an attempt to showcase the numerous accounts and degrees of struggle that each descendant faces, which is factored in by the time period they live in. Furthermore, while

It is easy to interpret “Bloodchild” as a slave narrative, because we inherently are ready to take it that way. To understand the story as anything else can be disturbing to the human psyche, especially so, since it is about humans serving as egg carriers for an alien species. The connection between slavery and this example is too clear cut. Even I, as I am writing this, am having second thoughts. However, Butler isn’t trying to make the human’s subservience as a positive thing, or even as the best way for humans to live; she us, in truth, making a story about what humans will do survive, and how that could even lead to an alien love. Modern humans value freedom as a basic principle beyond all else, which can be seen in contemporary young adult

I silently fight. My neighbors think of me as just a good cook and wife, but I do so much more. There is true compassion and desire in my heart to see the slaves be free. I have not always thought this way. I once thought that if I just ignored what was going on and refused to participate in it then I was a good person. One day though when I was thinking and agreeing with the Fugitive Slave Law an incident happened where my opinion on slavery was drastically changed.

The narrative of slave resistance is often times limited to pragmatic violence. The art of obtaining liberation is documented in this manner due to the secrecy practiced by those colonized to maintain their livelihoods. Consequently, this forms a presumption that allows one to underestimate the mental capacity of the colonized subjects. We separate the human, analytical traits and began to see animalistic creatures acting on rage that is subjectively justified. While it is obvious that the use of violence to evade power is a factor in the fight towards liberation, there were more subtle, sophisticated approaches taken. Those colonized created ways to communicate and fight back in ways that their oblivious rulers rarely noticed or grasped. The indirect techniques, or “hidden forms of resistance” were often directed towards political and economic autonomy. Those methods included the tellings of