SLAVE NARRATIVES: "My Master, My Oppressor" & "Hope for a Life of Liberty"

 

Blankness 

Imagine you are living your life like this:  You have no knowledge of your age, name, family, birthday.  Would you live your life purposefully?  No rights bear your being.  You say ‘Huh.’  Yeah.  (You think:  What country am I vacationing on because I want out!)  Not only have you no rights or knowledge of yourself, you’ve been rationed poor food, pay, and clothing.  You could not voice your rights to your “master.”  You could only stand, listen, and be silent.  (Getting warmer now . . . see where this is going?)  If you’ve ever done anything remotely wrong, you were flogged —flogged as your master tie you by your wrists or pinned to the ground and then whipped severely until you bled horridly.  No, this is not pretend; this has happened . . . 180 to 280 years ago. 

 

 

Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society

A century and eight decades has passed since blacks were deprived.  Blacks were treated like brutes.  Blacks were treated like a piece of property.  Sold and bought to their white masters as a piece of property, they were without one thing that defines our nation as a land of opportunity—liberty.  The liberty we often overlook today that grants us our rights, our freedom:  To pursue our dreams, live our lives, receive fortunes for hard our efforts.  Men and women of color were used for field work at plantations owned by their white masters. 

 

 

At the plantations, they were given victuals or rations of food.  But none were rich.  And if you refused to eat your victuals, you were flogged severely.  By the words of Olaudah Equiano (Gustavus Vassa) who was sold and bought six times by the age of thirteen, Olaudah records in his journal that on one of his journeys he refused to eat and was consequently flogged; furthermore Olaudah lived and witnessed other black men grieve and sometimes wish for death by the deprived soils they rest their bodies; meanwhile they only had each other to hold onto in their arms at the depths of their darkest hours where black men were cut and mangled over the most trivial matters.  Thus Equiano was subject to and witnessed the utmost cruelty where he worked at large plains with these given tools:  hoes, axes, shovels, beaks, pointed iron.  They labored those tools on plantations that harvested a variety of crops and fruits owned by separate masters:  Indian corns, tobaccos, sugar canes, peppers, pompkins, aedas, plantains, yams.  Contrary to their lives, the lands they harvested on were rich and fruitful.  Spinning and weaving cotton, the black women were employed with men at the same tillage.  Equiano was sold for 40 sterlings. 

 

 

Monthly food rations included eight pounds of pork and one bushel of cornmeal.  Clothing were spared to two coarse shirts and only one pair of the following:  shoes, trousers, jackets, stocking.  Nearly a century has passed since Equiano’s story as we transition into Fredrick Douglas’s in which he accounts his in the mid-nineteenth century, recounting fugitive slaves and a life of prejudice from his dark skin.  Men of colored skin were looked upon suspiciously by the fugitives who feared for their recapture by their old masters.  Douglas says the darkies were crippled in their intellect, darkened in their minds, and debased on morals.  Douglas also lived to witness these occasions:  outrage, savage barbarity, scourging, mutilations, branding.  But wretchedness was not measured not in lashes and toil, but by cruel, blighting death.  Two cruel murders of black men were left without resolve in the eyes of the law or the community.  Neither the court nor the community took notice.  In the meanwhile women were no less treated equally as they cried out shrieks by the lashes of cowskins on their bare backs.  The black women also worked at the field and labored at the following tasks:  washing, mending, cooking.  The black men were assigned tasks that were not paid many times over:  shoemaking, blacksmithing, cart wrighting, coopering, weaving, grain-grinding.  They lived a life of degraded humanity in an absolute power than a life of liberty that we’ve privileged to live in today; therefore I have to put the words of their journal entries into a prose:                         

 

 

Olaudah Equiano  (1789)

Olaudah Equiano aka Gustavus Vassa

Lulilai's My Master, My Oppressor

 

 

 Ask me to paint the land where I have traveled and I would tell you it’s as rich and fruitful, but ask me my journey as a slave, my master, my oppressor would have me say we’ve grown fearful.  Biblical verse of our religion teaches us, “Do unto others as you would want onto you,” but my master, my oppressor has us slave men deprived.  Yet we cannot question our lack of knowing—of our names, families, birthdays.  No, we have been treated like brutes and subhuman; thus our minds have darkened, our intellects crippled.  By no means are my words trumped or invented, my master, my oppressor had me flogged for as petty as my refusing to eat victuals, and when I sought comfort of another black man, bathing our tears in each others’ arms, I had to soon part with him.  I have not only suffered but witnessed suffering of my men.

 

 

By my far travels across seas and lands, here I have seen riches of booming Indian corns, tobacco; there I have traveled again to see battening pompkins, plantains; and elsewhere I have traveled and seen shooting sugar canes.  Many times I have set sail on a vessel of one or two masts.  There we’ve uncovered the lands where plantations housed slaves by a few dozens or multiplied by many dozens.  My master, my oppressor has us eat bullocks, goats, poultry, and at the same time tools were given to me as an employed man.  Black men in tillage labor in large plains where his identity is defined by tools which harvest the plains — hoes, axes, shovels, beaks, and painted iron.  We suffer under scorching daylights as we labor with our tools in hand.

 

 

My master, my oppressor has us suffer as he flogs; my master, my oppressor has us suffer in frightful coil as he hangs; my master, my oppressor has us grieve and wish for death; my master, my oppressor has us deprived of virtues; my master, my oppressor has us suffer under rapine and cruelty; my master, my oppressor has us cut and mangled out of trivial occasions; my master, my oppressor has us negro-men who escape pinned to the ground; my master, my oppressor also changes as I set sail and arrive.  And once I arrived onto a new land, I was sold for 40 sterlings.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Frederick Douglass  (1845)

Fredrick Douglass, African American abolitionist

Lulilai's Hope for a Life of Liberty

 

Help our black men escape our slave code and let our black men live their lives in good condition.  I beg to change our situation from a deplorable place.  You have us treated as a piece of property, have us chastised til we are frightful, have us suffer in degraded humanity, and you have our black women shriek by the slaps of cowskins because of our roots that stems to an African descent.

 

 

We beg to be treated not as brutes, but we ask to stop the outrage, the savage barbarity.  We have suffered too much under scourging as our black slaves have been mutilated and branded.  We’ve been deprived of food and clothing, suffered under cruelty of your lashes and toils, and lived under a small clutter of an absolute power.  I ask you to reconsider because we want our men to live a life of liberty. 

 

 

I expect my black men to be treated as human beings that have them walk freely onto streets and have them respected as yours would.  Allow me to draw a noble cause in which our men escape — escape prejudice and wretchedness, escape privations and sufferings, escape cruel murders in which black men are murdered without repentance by the courts and communities.  I ask you to reconsider because we want our men to live a life of liberty.

 

 

That is our men have labored in your rich fields, our men have worked under your command — shoemaking, mending, blacksmithing, grain-grinding.  But our men have not been paid plentiful allowance, so I beg you to reconsider our allowance.  Have our men suffer no longer under harsh grueling labor and I ask you to reconsider for the hope I have for our men’s future.  Help us reach a new ground in which new springs give birth to a new hope, for we have slept under dark cloudy skies that our days have stretched in shadows at length.  I hope to change the conditions we live in our cottages, hope for our men’s future in which new light will shine through, and make us change our lives so it is enriches our lives to a life of liberty.  I ask you for this change because we want our men to live a life of liberty.  I have hope for a promise of a newfound future of our men.