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Worse Than Slavery Reflection Paper David M. Oshinsky’s book “Worse Than Slavery” brings to life the reality that faced slaves after the abolishment of slavery. It recounts the lives that these men faced daily and it made me question the humanity of all those who were involved and question how as a society we let this ever happen. From the convicts being leased out to people who didn’t care about their well-being to a life back on a state ran plantation, where life was worse than it was for them as slaves. It showed just how unfair the justice system was for a black prisoner compared to a white prisoner. Their lives were worthless and replaceable and only mattered when they were thought to be worth something to someone. The system of convict …show more content…
Even though usually these people from the sounds of it were usually just swept under a rug, or that the camp would clean its act up when the state or others came to check on it isn’t. From the way that the book put it sounds like no one really started to question the methods of the camp until they were brought to light by the civil rights movement. Even then it took someone who knew someone there or someone who spent time there, for them to even hear about it. When it did make the headlines in was used to break the “Restless Race-Mixers” who wanted to put an end to segregation laws. This came as a shock to me and to think that our country put basically innocent people in facility that had for decades had been used on criminal that had committed murdered, rape, and other crimes, not protesting. Then for them to be stripped of all their dignity a face punish that was meant to break them. While yes, this punish didn’t match that, that was used on the convicts and no hands per se were laid upon them; they still face a form of torture. This was wrong and to think that this didn’t make the government question these methods, is a flaw from our past that we have to deal
In his book Worse Than Slavery, Oshinsky graphically documents the story of the “farm with slaves” that turned an enormous profit to the state. Throughout the book one is continually confronted with the systematized degradation and humiliation of blacks. Before reading this book I thought I knew the extent of America’s racist past but Oshinsky proved me wrong. There are many dark truths and shameful skeletons I have not encountered before. Parchman Farm with its use of race-baiting techniques and capitalizing on racist fears of black lawlessness as a means to justify political control, violence, and murder is absolutely horrifying. At the heart of Oshinsky’s work, one can see the continual effort of whites to restore their supremacy at all
I would also recommend this to any history book-worms who seem to be very passionate for the scoop on the real story of past history and feel like they do not know as much information about the subject as they feel they should. This book by Boles is the opposite of what you would expect when you saw that the subject would be about slavery. When you open a book about slavery you expect to hear how horrible times were, how the past was such an iconic time due to the treatment of African Americans. I feel it is important to spread the history of our generation as we sometimes try to ignore the past. What I do know is that this book does make me wonder, is this problem still amongst us today? And if so, is it still being handled with ignorance as it was at the time it begun? Understanding slavery and race in today’s generations in the United States is a sensitive and controversial
Franklin, J., Moss, A. Jr. From Slavery to Freedom. Seventh edition, McGraw Hill, Inc.: 1994.
Slavery is one of America’s biggest regrets. Treating a human with the same beating heart as a low, worthless piece of trash only because of skin color is a fact that will forever remain in our country’s history. Those marked as slaves were sold, tortured, demoralized, raped and killed. After the Emancipation in which slavery was illegalized, many would think that the horrors were over and that America as a whole started a new leaf. Unfortunately, the man of the South, refusing to move forward tried to keep the colored man down as best they could. Their premeditated plans and actions to find an excuse to continue torturing and killing the Negro man continued for years, which are documented in “A Red Record”. This story captures the grueling events African Americans were put through and the unfairness of the times. By capturing and sharing this history it will make sure these mistakes can never be repeated again .
While the formal abolition of slavery, on the 6th of December 1865 freed black Americans from their slave labour, they were still unequal to and discriminated by white Americans for the next century. This ‘freedom’, meant that black Americans ‘felt like a bird out of a cage’ , but this freedom from slavery did not equate to their complete liberty, rather they were kept in destitute through their economic, social, and political state.
For more than two hundred years, a certain group of people lived in misery; conditions so inhumane that the only simile that can compare to such, would be the image of a caged animal dying to live, yet whose live is perished by the awful chains that dragged him back into a dark world of torture and misfortune. Yes, I am referring to African Americans, whose beautiful heritage, one which is full of cultural beauty and extraordinary people, was stained by the privilege given to white men at one point in the history of the United States. Though slavery has been “abolished” for quite some years; or perhaps it is the ideal driven to us by our modern society and the lines that make up our constitution, there is a new kind of slavery. One which in
In, “The Narrative of the life of Frederick Douglass”, readers get a first person perspective on slavery in the South before the Civil War. The author, Frederick Douglass, taught himself how to read and write, and was able to share his story to show the evils of slavery, not only in regard to the slaves, but with regard to masters, as well. Throughout Douglass’ autobiography, he shares his disgust with how slavery would corrupt people and change their whole entire persona. He uses ethos, logos, and pathos to help establish his credibility, and enlighten his readers about what changes needed to be made.
When reading about the institution of slavery in the United States, it is easy to focus on life for the slaves on the plantations—the places where the millions of people purchased to serve as slaves in the United States lived, made families, and eventually died. Most of the information we seek is about what daily life was like for these people, and what went “wrong” in our country’s collective psyche that allowed us to normalize the practice of keeping human beings as property, no more or less valuable than the machines in the factories which bolstered industrialized economies at the time. Many of us want to find information that assuages our own personal feelings of discomfort or even guilt over the practice which kept Southern life moving
In this story it clearly shows us what the courts really mean by freedom, equality, liberty, property and equal protection of the laws. The story traces the legal challenges that affected African Americans freedom. To justify slavery as the “the way things were” still begs to define what lied beneath slave owner’s abilities to look past the wounded eyes and beating hearts of the African Americans that were so brutally possessed.
To understand the desperation of wanting to obtain freedom at any cost, it is necessary to take a look into what the conditions and lives were like of slaves. It is no secret that African-American slaves received cruel and inhumane treatment. Although she wrote of the horrific afflictions experienced by slaves, Linda Brent said, “No pen can give adequate description of the all-pervading corruption produced by slavery." The life of a slave was never a satisfactory one, but it all depended on the plantation that one lived on and the mast...
For most American’s especially African Americans, the abolition of slavery in 1865 was a significant point in history, but for African Americans, although slavery was abolished it gave root for a new form of slavery that showed to be equally as terrorizing for blacks. In the novel Slavery by Another Name, by Douglas Blackmon he examines the reconstruction era, which provided a form of coerced labor in a convict leasing system, where many African Americans were convicted on triumphed up charges for decades.
During the period after the emancipation many African Americans are hoping for a better future with no one as their master but themselves, however, according to the documentary their dream is still crushed since even after liberation, as a result of the bad laws from the federal government their lives were filled with forced labor, torture and brutality, poverty and poor living conditions. All this is shown in film.
After the Civil War ended in 1865, a big question was left: what does the future look like for freed slaves in America? For so long - 246 years, since the first African slave arrived in Virginia in 1619 - Southern African Americans were forced into slavery. However, in 1856, as a result of the Union’s win in the American Civil War and the determination of many, they were finally free - at least legally. The Civil War left a big dent on the South and tension was rising between whites and blacks. In the meantime, African Americans needed help, or else they would fall into the trenches of the American society once again. This was a time of crucial social change for Southern blacks, and the effects of Reconstruction on white and black race relations in America are still apparent and alive today.
Slavery is a system under which people are treated as property to be bought and sold, and are forced to work. Slavery was cruelty at its best. Slavery is described as long work days, a lack of respect for a human being, and the inability for a man or a woman to have gainful employment. The slaves were victimized the most for obvious reasons. Next on the list would be the families of both the slave and slave owners. At the bottom of the list would be the slave owners. Slavery does in fact victimize slaves, slave owner and their families by repeating the same cycle every generation.
Trying to explain this atrocity as human nature is shameful for those who were the subject or the horrific abuse that happened at that prison. It is the dehumanization of both the oppressors and the oppressed that lead to the undercharging of the people involved, and is a gross injustice of those who suffered to the hands of these