(McKay, Chap 21, pg 570) In order to get a good perspective on what being a slave was like, we will look into a narrative written by Olaudah Equiano. Equiano was a native of Iboland who was captured at the age of eleven. He describes how some villagers would wait until the adults would go out in the plantations to work to abduct their younger children. Once Equiano was sold to the Europeans he says that they were treated horribly beaten and cramped on a very small boat. The reason that the slaves were treated badly could have been due to the fact that the Europeans had to pay a high price for them or just due to a lack of space.
Cam Tu Ho Mrs. Lee English 3P, Period 4 January 27, 2011 The Cruelty of slavery “Being born is like being kidnapped. And then sold to slaver,” was said by Anday Warhol to show how the life of slave was like –being born to slavery was like to taken away the slave’s life, taken away from their family. These two men Frederick Douglass and Olaudah Equiano, were the examples of that saying. Frederick Douglass, who was writing his autobiography –Narrative from the life of Frederick Douglass- was brought to slavery when he was born. He had separated from his family at a very young age.
Ellie Wiesel experiences what many people cannot even imagine is possible, at a very young age. In the death camps, the Jews are treated with a terrible lack of respect, as if they weren’t humans anymore. They worked their prisoners to death, and did many difference experiments on them to test the limits of the human body. To the leaders of the death camps, a human life mattered to them no more as a small animals life. In the death camps, the officers change the prisoners names to numbers, taking away the last thing that the prisoners could still use to remember the past, for they stripped them of every possible memory of earlier happiness.
As soon as slaves were taken aboard, the men were shackled two by two, the right wrist and ankle of one to left wrist and ankle of another. They were then sent to a hold that the sailors had built on deck. Slaves forcefully pushed together, back to face, lay cramped and helpless on the boat. Their sweating bodies were so close to each other that it was not unlikely to feel the hot breath of another slave stinging the back of one’s neck. Extra shelves were attached to many vessels, limiting the minute amount of
Others of them die from either suffocation from being very crowded or starvation. After we had to throw all the deceased slaves overboard because was sicken. That night I will never forget it I wish I could help these people but I just don’t have to power to do so if I would help them I would got in trouble by the captain and everybody would have thought am a negro lover. When we finally reached to our destination the slaves were getting sold off their families were splitting apart young children were being taken away from their own mothers it was just a painful and mournful thing to watch. Well after my crew and I left I thought about my family and how I will feel if they were ripped apart from and when I got back home to my beautiful wife and children I decided to be anti-slavery and to never do another journey like that again.
Equiano depicts horrifying details of his life. What surprised me the most was how he nearly died because of the terrible conditions on the slave ship. Another upsetting thing was how his African kidnappers took him without mercy. Overall,
“Her arms were stretched up at their full length, so that she stood upon the ends of her toes….he commenced to lay on the heavy cowskin, and soon the warm, red blood came dripping to the floor.” In this quote Aunt Hester is being whipped for disobeying Captain Anthony’s orders. He told her not to go out at night, and not to let him catch her in the company of other men that were paying attention to her. The violence against slaves was very gory. There are many instances where people kill slaves and nothing is done about it. “Mr.
No one was treated better than the next, but women faced some conditions that men and children didn’t. Sexual abuse and rape from ship crewmembers was very common for them. Many Africans chose to not eat in hopes of starving to death. Some jumped the boat and drowned. To conclude, the Middle Passage is clearly the roots of the slavery that occurred in the United States.
Cultural Studies: African American history: Rosa Parks For many centuries the African American people had been forced to suffer barbaric suffering and gross inhumanities by the hands of their white leaders based on the colour of their skin. Many were brought to America as slaves and forced to work on plantations under terrible conditions. The punishments for resisting this treatment would involve brutal whippings and many times this behaviour would result in death. Few African Americans spoke up against this treatment especially in the 19th century as they had no rights at all and were consider inferior beings. However some men and women did stand up against this treatment and fought for their civil rights and for this they are preserved in history for their bravery.
Her hatred toward slavery led her to writing the book, Uncle Tom’s Cabin. This book depicted slavery’s cruelty, inhumanity and the impact that it has on the families lives. The characters in this book portrayed the life of real slaves and the struggles they went through. Poor old Uncle Tom was beat until he died. This was something that happen to many slaves when they were being punished and it may have been just because they were working to slow.