The Tortures of Slaves

When looking at slavery, when sometimes forget how serious the injuries inflicted by slave owners were. Many slaves were beaten day and night without any means to recover from the beatings. Furthermore, slave owners would experiment on slaves to see whether they were capable of enduring large amounts of pain. Due to the slow progress of medical procedures and medicine, slaves were not able to treat themselves from the betaings of their slave owners. Not to mention the diseases passed onto the slaves. Many women were raped by their slave owners and then abandoned or even murdered. Many women who did not become pregnant had sexual diseases that slowly killed them from the inside.

Many people today may asked how can african americans ever forgive white slave owners or people that enslaved other people.

Malcom X

Malcom X is an African American human rights activist who was born in 1925 and died in 1965. All his life, he defended the rights of the African American community. Some people consider him to have been the most influential African American in the US history. Malcom X was from a family were the black pride was very strong, his father would teach him about self reliance and pride. At first, he got involved in several criminal activities and was sentenced to jail for this reasons. He soon became a member of Nation Al Islam and became its main speaker. At that time, Malcom X would advocate for black supremacy, a strategy at the odd of the Civil Right Movement. Also, instead of advocating for integration of the Black community, he believed blacks and whites should be separated. In 1964, Malcom X became a sunni Muslim and changed radically his point view about the Integration issue in the united states. Indeed, he disapproved his previous behavior as a Black supremacist and disavowed racism. Toward the end of his life he worked with several civil rights leaders and was finally killed on February 21, 1965 by its former partners of Nation Al Islam.
I found really interesting to see the offensive side of the African American activism, to be opposed to the pacifism of the civil rights movement.

This is a picture of arguably one of the most influential men in United States history. I am actually very surprised that nobody has made a post on this blog of the late Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Dr. King was played a crucial part in the Civil Rights Movement in the 1960s era, and he did so in a “nonviolent manner”. Martin Luther King Jr. is also regarded as one of the greatest public speakers, and it is proven in his “I Have A Dream” speech. Over 200,000 Civil Rights activists marched on Washington to the Lincoln Memorial, and Dr. King delivered his seventeen minute “I Have A Dream” speech. It can be argued that this event is one of the biggest turning points in the history of the African American struggle and the Civil Rights Movement. Dr. King, and many other activists, protested with signs, had sit ins, got hosed down by police forces, and had been arrested in the name of Civil Rights, and up until this point they never obtained full legal equality. After this speech was delivered, it wasn’t until just about a year later when the Civil Rights Act of 1964 came about, and provided equality for African Americans. Although this was a major step for society as a whole, racism and bigotry still existed, and still exists in this world today. It is very hard, arguably impossible, to eliminate racism from this world, but Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. did everything in his power to stop as much of it as he could. If our world today had more people like Dr. King, this world would be an equal place, and a better place all around.

By: Jake Robinson

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WfsY2y7xrXo

Booker T. Washington vs W.E.B. DuBois

Lift Every Voice and Sing

Lift every voice and sing,

'Til earth and heaven ring,

Ring with the harmonies of Liberty;

Let our rejoicing rise

High as the listening skies,

Let it resound loud as the rolling sea.

Sing a song full of the faith that the dark past has taught us,

Sing a song full of the hope that the present has brought us;

Facing the rising sun of our new day begun,

Let us march on 'til victory is won.

Stony the road we trod,

Bitter the chast'ning rod,

Felt in the days when hope unborn had died;

Yet with a steady beat,

Have not our weary feet

Come to the place for which our fathers sighed?

We have come over a way that with tears has been watered,

We have come, treading our path through the blood of the slaughtered,

Out from the gloomy past,

'Til now we stand at last

Where the white gleam of our bright star is cast.

God of our weary years,

God of our silent tears,

Thou who has brought us thus far on the way;

Thou who has by Thy might

Led us into the light,

Keep us forever in the path, we pray.

Lest our feet stray from the places, our God, where we met Thee,

Lest, our hearts drunk with the wine of the world, we forget Thee;

Shadowed beneath Thy hand,

May we forever stand,

True to our God,

True to our native land.

In 1900, for Abraham Lincoln's birthday, 500 pupils from the Stanton School recited a poem called "Lift Every Voice and Sing" to welcome Booker T. Washington to their school. The poem was written by the school's principal, Weldon Johnson, for the occasion.
The poem marked many spirits, especially those of African Americans. They could use it to protest against their condition, but also as a way to express their hopes for the future. 5 years later, Weldon Johnson's brother made it a song that has been engraved into the African-American history.
The song became so popular and meaningful for the African American community that in 1919, it became "The National Negro Anthem". During the second half of the century, it was even often sung in accompaniment to the "The Star Spangled Banner" at public events and performances across the US that involved a significant black population, reflecting that notion of identity, pride, and unity that African Americans share.

Follow the Drinking Gourd

Perhaps no song is more closely associated with the Underground Railroad than this one.

To follow the North Star was the message embedded in this spiritual; instructions are included in the song to follow the points of the drinking gourd (the Big Dipper) to the brightest star, which is the North Star.

The Story Behind the Song

A one-legged sailor, known as Peg Leg Joe, worked at various jobs on plantations as he made his way around the South. At each job, he would become friendly with the slaves and teach them the words to the song, Follow the Drinking Gourd. Each spring following Peg Leg Joe’s visit to these plantations, many young men would be missing from those plantations.

Peg Leg Joe’s plantation visits focused on the area north of Mobile, Alabama, around 1859. The escape route travelled north to the headwaters of the Tombigbee River, through the divide, and then down the Tennessee River to the Ohio River. To guide the slaves along the way, the trail was marked with the outline of a human left foot and a round circle in place of the right foot.

The trip from the South to Ohio took most refugees a full year, so they were encouraged to leave in the winter to make it to the Ohio River the following winter. As the Ohio is too fast and too wide to swim across, it was best crossed in winter when it was frozen.

The first verse instructs slaves to leave in the winter—“When the sun comes back” refers to winter and spring when the altitude of the sun at noon is higher each day. Quail, a migratory bird, spends the winter in the South. The “drinking gourd” refers to the Big Dipper, “the old man” means Peg Leg Joe, and “the great big river” refers to the Ohio River.

The second verse told slaves to follow the bank of the Tombigbee River north. They were to look for dead trees marked with the drawings of a left foot and a round mark, denoting a peg leg. In the third verse, the hidden message instructed the slaves to continue north over the hills when they reached the Tombigbee’s headwaters. From there, they were to travel along another river—the Tennessee. There were several Underground Railroad routes that met up on the Tennessee.

Slaves were told the Tennessee joined another river in the song’s last verse. Once they crossed that river, a guide would meet them on the north bank and guide them on the rest of their journey to freedom.
Lyrics:

When the Sun comes back
And the first quail calls
Follow the Drinking Gourd,
For the old man is a-waiting for to carry you to freedom
If you follow the Drinking Gourd

The riverbank makes a very good road.
The dead trees will show you the way.
Left foot, peg foot, travelling on,
Follow the Drinking Gourd.

The river ends between two hills
Follow the Drinking Gourd.
There’s another river on the other side
Follow the Drinking Gourd.

When the great big river meets the little river
Follow the Drinking Gourd.
For the old man is a-waiting for to carry to freedom
If you follow the Drinking Gourd.

A Negro Hung Alive by the Ribs to a Gallow

This disturbing image was created for a book entitled, Narrative of a Five-Years' Expedition against the Revolted Negroes of Surinam. The author, Englishman John Gabriel Stedman, was hired by the Dutch to help quell slave uprisings in their South American colony. In his "narrative" he describes the plants and animals he encountered, as well as how he and fellow soldiers tortured runaway slaves who had been recaptured.

A Negro Hung Alive by the Ribs to a Gallows is based on a crude sketch by Stedman, engraved by the famous English poet and artist, William Blake. Its graphic depiction of a slave in Surinam hanging by a single rib illustrates the general lack of compassion whites had when dealing with enslaved Africans throughout the world.