04.04.2015

Unchained memories: Reading from the slave narratives is a document from HBO production in association with the library of congress. The library of congress is a place where the most of slave narratives are stored (multi volume interviews with slave). After the civil war in 1865 more than 4 million slaves were set free. Although people still treated African- American people as inferiors. Many of them were still scared to talk about the past. Over two thousand interviews were transcribed. The slaves were working and working and cotton plantations made America the biggest exporter and everyone but slaves profited from it. It was against the law for slaves to be educated. On the age of twelve children started to work on the fields. Many owners of slaves believed that sexual access to slave women was one of their prerogatives. The rape of black women also served for humiliating their husbands. On many plantations was whipping for public spectacles. While the narratives were recollecting most ex slaves were still living in extreme poverty. Living condition differed from place to place. Marriages had no legal standing and could be broken apart at the owner´s will. Between 1800 and 1860 one million slaves were forcibly transported to new locations. About a third slave families were split apart. Five thousand slaves a year tried to escape but only negligible part succeeded. All the facts in the video were supported with narratives.

Mary Reynolds (https://xroads.virginia.edu/~hyper/wpa/reynold1.html)  was born in Louisiana to a free man from North and his wife. She had other six siblings. She was born in the same time as a baby of their master - Dr. Kilpatrick. The mother died so Mary´s mother fed both kids. Mary was playing with the girl which she claimed to be not very often. Contrary to the video where they said that it was normal to buy black children to play with master´s kids. Kilpatrick owned a large land and over then a hundred slaves. Mary describes that she has scarves on her body but she saw a lot more than what was caused to her. She also depicts daily working routine that does not differ from any other mentioned in other sources. Their slave drive Solomon did not like them to pray, he punished them for that. She tells about the master having children with black women and some parts of this narrative is also used in the video. She was beaten because she knew a man who escaped but she had nothing to do with it. The consequence of it was that she couldn´t breed children.

Walter Calloway (https://xroads.virginia.edu/~hyper/wpa/reynold1.html) was born in Richmond, Virginia. On contrary to Mary´s narration he says that they were allowed to pray and even the preacher sometimes come to them, they could also play with white children but they were not allowed to learn. He mentions the time of the war. The text is transcribed in the exact language used by Walter which from time to time caused me difficulties to understand properly.

Moodlinka text Racism and Slavery is full of significant ideas and facts. Slavery was enormous business that brought profit to all and of course it did not concern only America. ” All kinds of little people on both sides of the Atlantic drew blood money directly from the slave traffic…”.  I did not take into consideration before that everybody earned on it not only the owners of them. Also was very interesting the information about the impact of slavery to white workers who before laid on the bottom of the society. These people weren´t mentioned in any of the studying materials. At the most there were references only to slave drives that probably had a better position in society than the regular white workers.

Sectionalism and slavery was divided into two parts. First called North and South compared and the second A closer look at the South. The first looks like a study explaining the differences between the South and North on two persons representing these two unlike sides. Both generals at that time,  a modern man Ulysses Simpson Grant who was representing the North  and Robert Edward Lee, living according to the old aristocratic concept, was a leader of the Confederate Army. In the second part there is written that the South was really different in the way of living to the North. Everything there was slower and that the class differences were highly recognizable. A man who had more land had also a higher social status. The issue of slavery overshadowed the forces of unity in American society. 

These all texts did not contain any facts or data but many thoughts and real stories that are sometimes quite difficult to imagine. How can a human treat another human like that. What is more compelling question for me: living in that time would I behave differently?