Slavery
The Slave Trade, by François August Biard (1799-1882), painted in 1833
Slavery is a condition in which a human being is owned by another. Slaves were deprived of most humans’ rights, they were defined like someone else’s property. The history of slavery can be divided in three main periods.
Slavery in Ancient times:
The first main period in the history of slavery is Ancient slavery. During ancient times, slavery held an important part in society. Numerous countries were engaged in slavery such as Japan, Thailand, China and many other Asian countries. For instance, in Ancient China, slavery appeared during the Shang dynasty (18th to 12th century BCE) and more than 5% of the population were enslaved and were under the domination of someone else. This is explained by the fact that most families sold their children as they were unable of feeding them. Still, the major slave-owning society in Archaic times was Athens where slaves were mainly prisoners of the Persians wars or trade “products” with other city-states like Thrace. Athenians also practised debt slavery until it was abolished by the laws of Solon in 594 BCE. Other ancient slave-owning societies are Ancient Egypt, the Ottoman Empire and the Roman Empire who is known to force slaves to fight as gladiators in arenas.
Triangular trade and slavery in America:
Another important period in the history of slavery is the period of the Triangular trade and of the American slavery. The Triangular trade were the linking routes between three destinations, which as its name suggests formed a triangle-like shape: Europe, sub-Saharan Africa and America. The traded goods varied from a destination to another. In exchange for the goods brought and sold in Africa by Europeans, mainly manufactures goods, rum and textiles, slaves were transported to America in ships in cruel conditions. It is estimated that more than 17 million of men, women and children were deported during the transatlantic slave trade. Finally, the last stage of the trade was between American and Europe where raw materials, cotton, sugar, coffee and tobacco were traded. Once they arrived in America, the slaves were bought to work in the plantations. The slaves worked many hours a day under the sun with little access to food and water. They were also treated brutally and frequently whipped and raped.
Civil war:
Finally, the most important period in the history of slavery in America is the period of the American civil war. The civil war began in 1861 and led to the end of slavery in America. The two opponents of the American civil war were the Northern United States led by Abraham Lincoln, who supported the abolition of enslavement, and the Southern United States led by Jefferson Davis who were supporters of slavery and forced labour. Fortunately, the war ended 1865 with the victory of the Northern states.
Slavery in arts:
The Slave Trade, by François August Biard (1799-1882), painted in 1833.
Slavery is a subject taken on by numerous authors. Many slaves freed after the Civil war wrote their autobiographies of the years they were enslaved such as Frederick Douglass, Juan Francisco Manzano, Olaudah Equiano, Harriet Jacobs and Hannah Crafts.
Slavery is also a theme that has inspired numberless artists, especially painters. “The Slave Trade” is a painting by the French artist François Biard. This painting was made before the abolition of slavery and presents the slavery as immoral and atrocious as it illustrates what happened to the slaves when they finally arrived in America. We can see the corpses and, in the background, slaves being whipped. In the distance, a ship is arriving from Africa, most likely transporting Africans to work in sugar, cotton and tobacco plantations.
The legacy of slavery:
Even though slavery has been abolished for now many years, its history still affects today’s society all around the world. This graph presents the percent of adults who are convinced that the history of slavery in the United States still affect African American people.
Slavery is also the main cause of racism nowadays.
LYNCHING
by Steve Mytilineos
What is a lynching and how common were they in the United States?
A lynching is the illegal act of killing someone, usually an African American, because they are believed to have committed a crime, even if there is no evidence to suggest they committed said crime. Unfortunately this heinous crime was very common in the South during the 19th century.
Hundreds, possibly even thousands of people suffered the same fate as Joe Coe. An African American man who was tortured, burned, and starved before being lynched. Because of an accusation by a white girls called Lizzie Yates, saying that Joe Coe had raped her. It was later proven that Joe Coe was innocent.
Next, we need to talk about mass lynchings. This crime is the same as a lynching, but usually against a certain race. This crime usually resulted in dozens of deaths. Two good of examples of this crime are the New Orleans lynching of 1891. And the Chinese massacre of 1871.
Another example of a lynching is that of Sam Hose, who after killing his master in self defence, was captured by lynchers, forced to walk 25 miles in the sun. Then the lynchers cut Sam’s ears, fingers and genitals and large chunks of skin from his face. They then doused him in kerosene, tied him to a tree and lit the tree on fire. The part that makes lynchings even worse is that this was one of the least violent lynchings I could find.
To conclude, I think we can all agree that lynchings are a dark chapter in the United States’ history, which should not be forgotten. Thousands of people suffered over false accusations or discrimination based on race.
Former Slaves authors
by Faidra Tsifou
Even though most slaves were illiterate, some had the chance to be taught or teach themselves how to write and read. A slave was putting himself in danger if he/she was caught reading by an owner who has forbidden him/her to do so. An example of this case is Frederick Douglass, a former slave that I will be presenting in more detail later on. Nowadays, we can find multiple novels, autobiographies and memoirs written by former slaves. They used writing and literature to describe their personal experience when they were slaves and to express what they felt while coping with life under slavery. Their goal was to spread their abolitionist thoughts and ideas worldwide, for racism to be replaced by equality.
· Frederick Douglass
Frederick Douglass was born on February 14th, 1818 in Maryland as a slave but ended up succeeding very well in his life. He was an American social reformer, abolitionist, orator, writer and statesman. He was the National leader of the abolitionist movement in Massachusetts and New York and the first African American nominated for Vice President of the United States. What Douglass wanted was the equality of all people, and this is for example why he was the only African American to attend the first women’s rights convention and he did a lot of antislavery writings. To spread his message, he wrote multiple autobiographies describing his life as a slave and generally the events of his life. One of his autobiographies was called: Narrative of the life of Frederick Douglass, An American Slave. It was published in 1845, it became a best seller and influenced the abolition movement. An interesting fact about Douglass, is that he was the most photographed American of the 19th century. He used photography to promote his political views, but also to end slavery and racism. Frederick Douglass was a person that showed the intellectual capacities of African Americans and more importantly of former slaves. He was a model person to his community. He died on February 20th, 1895 (aged 77) of a massive heart attack after he attended a meeting of the National Council of Women in Washington.
· Olaudah Equiano
Olaudah Equiano was born in 1745 in southern Nigeria. He was an abolitionist and a writer. As a child, he was enslaved in the Caribbean and he was freed in 1766. Equiano’s life and duties as a slave were different from other slave’s tasks. He did not work in fields, he served his owners personally and went to sea, he was taught to read and write, and worked in trading. After he was freed, he lived in London and supported the British abolitionist group composed of Africans living in Britain. Equiano also wrote his autobiography, a memoir called: The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano, published in 1789. It is the earliest known example of published writing by an African American writer to be widely read in England. It became a best seller by 1792 and it was then also published in Russia, Germany, Holland and the United States. It represents various styles of writing such as slavery, travel and spiritual narratives. In this autobiography Equiano describes his life as a slave, he explains how he became an independent man by studying the Bible and his success on gaining his own freedom and making his own business. Olaudah Equiano died on March 31st, 1797 (aged 52) at Westminster, Great Britain.
· Harriet Jacobs
Harriet Jacobs was born into slavery in 1813 in South Carolina. She was an African American writer and also an abolitionist and feminist. When she was six years old, after her mother’s death, she lived with her owner, a woman who taught her how to read and write. Later in her life she was sexually harassed by her owner Dr. James Norcom. She managed to escape to New York where she was reunited with her two children and her brother and where she served a family as a nanny for their children. During the Civil was she went to the South with her daughter to organize help and found two schools for fugitives and freed slaves. Jacobs obtained legal freedom thanks to Cornelia Willis, the woman for whom she worked as a nanny for her children. Cornelia bought Jacob’s freedom when she learned that her legal owners had travelled to New York to claim her back. Harriet Jacobs wrote her autobiography: Incidents in the Life of a Woman Slave Girl, published in 1861, now considered an “American classic”. It belongs to the genre of slave narrative. The pseudonym that Harriet Jacobs used for her autobiography was Linda Brent. The book of course describes Jacobs’ life as a slave and how she gained freedom for herself and for her children. She explains the struggle a woman slave faced, such as sexual abuse and the constant fear that her children might be taken from her to be sold. Harriet Jacobs died on March 7th, 1897 (aged 84) in Washington D. C.
· Hannah Bond
Hannah Bond’s history is not very well known. The known information about her is that she was an American writer who escaped from slavery in North Carolina in 1857 and then went to New Jersey and became a teacher. Historians have gathered information on her through the manuscript she wrote called: The Bondman’s Narrative, under her pen name Hannah Crafts, which belongs to the genre of fictional slave narrative. We do not know the exact date of when the novel was written but it is assumed it was written sometime in the mid 19thcentury. It is believed that Bond was self-taught. People have noticed that her novel shows influences from other literary works such as Charles Dickens’ Bleak House. Bond’s novel manuscript was found in New Jersey and was kept privately by someone. In 2001 it was purchased at an auction by Henry Louis Gates, Jr. a professor of African American literature and culture at Harvard University. In 2002, he arranged for the publication of the manuscript. The novel includes a preface where the university professor describes how he bought the manuscript, how he verified it and how he researched the identity of the author.
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