Essay about Humanities: Slavery and Slave Narrative...

Jahaad Coleman
Humanities/ Dr.White
African American History
6-29-13

Question #1

Since the beginning of slavery and establishment has had many adverse effects on Americans of African descent. The mental duty that institutionalized servitude and cruelty has had on African Americans can partially be blamed for the subpar success rate of many African Americans. To be concerned about the surroundings as a slave was none of their concern, however, undeniably brought awareness just by fixation. Any black babies born during enslavement were bastards, abandoned by their white fathers who despondently own them as property. That lost of affection left no sense of knowledge, not even a thought that maybe the person who was degrading them were actually in their bloodline. The well-considered “mulattos” were nowhere near the fields picking cotton with the other Negroes because they were too good for that. Better yet, not even good but were too much related to be sweating and putting in that much labor that the other slaves were emitting. The master needed to keep an eye on their “young ones”. No matter how much of slave they were to him he still had some level of concern for his children, and wanted their presence in plain sight. I won’t say he loved his mulatto children, because what father puts their child through a struggle so dehumanizing, so brutalizing that he utters the word “Love”. He uses their ignorance to an advantage that will surely come back and bite him in the rear.

During enslavement, slave masters owned big houses with bookshelves in a room and sometimes slaves would do their duty into dusting those books. Well, what happens when a slave gets access to a book? Their curiosity starts to kick in, once that happens it’s followed by instinct to pick up a book and become familiar with letters, words, and meanings. The master’s practical idea became his downfall because now his mulatto children are about to get a piece of hope and life that all the other white kids are getting. Children born into slavery were stripped of everything that belonged to them. At a young age they were stripped of natural affection that is so important for any person to grow as an adult, a mother. “I never saw my mother, to know her as such, more than four or five times in my life; and each of these times was very short in duration, and at night.” Those very same words came from Frederick Douglass who was born into slavery expressed his sorrow for the lack of not knowing his mother. That disconnection from mother and son causes psychological impact because no affection can immerge, and maturity as a whole is lost. In the slave narrative Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl by Harriet Jacobs writing as Linda Brent the superwoman also had to make tough decisions to ensure that her children stayed safe. In this case the mother decided that she had to leave her children. As Jacobs’s states "I had done all in my power to make my children comfortable during the time I expected to be separated from them". Shortly after this she ran away. It might look on the surface that like she abandoned her children but in reality this was the best thing for them. She could not very well take her children with her into the small cramped space where she lived for several years. When she was able to escape to the north she did send for her children but only after it was safe. The intellectual Negro is the most threatening human being to society, not the ignorant one because the ones with the most intelligence were giving out information that were so sacred that it would cost them their life.

Question #2

Martin Delany was an extraordinary black man who captured notice from the powerful leaders during his time. What made him different from all the other black abolitionist around during that time was he wasn’t satisfied with his position in the world, although, he was an African American writer. His work as a writer was so intellectual that he was

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