Prisoners of the Past essays

Prisoners of the Past essays Taken from their homelands without any warning, humility forced upon them as the wealthy tribe members were made servants, servants who were treated with less respect than that of a herd of cattle. Overtaken by the white man, who, for selfish reasons, took another race of humanity to call and possess as their own. Having to witness their loved ones being killed, punished severely, or beaten, being powerless to stop their pain. These were all surreal experiences that, unfortunately, many were forced to endure as slaves. Such a cruel, inhumane period of drudgery that is known as slavery was a poignant mark in history, which brought upon a concept that is still plagues society today. ...I was broken in body, soul and spirit (Douglass, pg.105). In mostly all accounts of slavery, the same objective was beheld by all slave owners: to break your slave, to have absolute power over his her mind, body and soul. In Frederick Douglasss account, he was mostly a city slave, whose owners literally believed that for a slave, or nigger as it was so crudely put back then, ignorance was bliss, and so it was. Had a slave known what was going on in the world, had they been able to read about certain rights that they did in fact hold legally, had they been able to have the knowledge held by a human being, there is no way life could have continued the way it did. Whites knew that education was in fact a slaves key to freedom, for with an education the slaves could outsmart their owners and prove that they were just as, if not more human than their owners were themselves. Another similarity that remained the same in the accounts was that once the person was taken into slavery, the y lost their identity. As a slave, they would receive new names, and be forced to forget all that they knew about their past. Memories of what had once been became only a blur of imagination. Out of all the accounts, the main differ...