Book summary - Up From Slavery The book, Up From Slavery, written by Booker Taliaferro Washington, profoundly touched me when I read it. ... Booker over came the obstacles of the free black man by educating himself and other blacks to become "equal" to whites. ... Booker was eager to attend the school but his step-father was not able to spare me from work, so could not attend it when it was first opened. ... Booker asked to show her that he could clean well, like he had learned from Mrs. ... He did not want anything given to him on a platter just because he was black but he wanted to earn it j...

• Word Count: 1450
• Approx Pages: 6
• Grade Level: High School

Douglas Argues Against Slavery and For Black Equality Have you ever thought about what it would be like to be a slave, back in the late seventeen and early eighteen hundreds? ... Douglass was treated like an animal and he would move to different plantations under different slave owners. ... Auld, she very kindly commenced to teach me the A, B, C." ... They are just trying to put the blacks in their place. ... It also shows how much blacks are equal to the whites, because blacks are intelligent people. ...

• Word Count: 1998
• Approx Pages: 8
• Grade Level: High School

Like Galations 5:1 states, "It is for freedom that Christ has set us free. ... This means that we should stand firm against everything that is wrong, because Jesus has set everyone free from sin just like the Civil War set slaves free from slavery. ... Romans 8:2 says" Because through Jesus Christ the law of the Spirit of life set me free from the law of sin and death. ... At least 38,000 black soldiers died. ... The Role of Blacks in the Civil War. ...

• Word Count: 1436
• Approx Pages: 6
• Grade Level: High School

It is his most anthologized poem after he wrote "We Wear Masks" because of the lines, "I know why the caged bird sings, ah me, When his wing is bruised and his bosom sore, When he beats his bars and he would be free." ... He was also a poet who wrote in black dialect and Standard English. ... He was the first black American poet to gain this national praise, although white and black writers before him have used it also (Laryea 108). ... This states that he knows why the people caged up like the bird are singing for freedom and redemption. He is using his skill with wording to show that a sl...

• Word Count: 1623
• Approx Pages: 6
• Grade Level: High School

Singers like Erkau Badu once said that her music is a revolution towards Humanism and not Feminism. ... Therefore, identifying black identity and blackness came fought through the method of music. ... My Lord calls me! He calls me by the thunder! ... Ooooh, I can't let this dark cloud catch me here. ...

• Word Count: 1424
• Approx Pages: 6
• Has Bibliography
• Grade Level: High School

Slaves were not treated like human beings, but rather like dirt. ... They had feelings and emotions just like everybody else. ... Covey succeeded in beating me. ... Most slave owners like Mr. ... Jim says " she pecks on me all de time, en treats me pooty rough, but she always said she wouldn't sell me down to Orleans .en I begin to get uneasy"(Twain 43). ...

• Word Count: 1876
• Approx Pages: 8
• Grade Level: High School

Blacks are used for cheap manual labor. ... It is a fact that the food that is processed like chicken, beef, and pork inside schools "have been made by a worker earning twenty cents an hour, not in a faraway country, but by a member of an invisible American workforce: prisoners" (Elk and Sloan, 2011). For example, I would argue how there is more labor jobs given to Blacks in jail than Blacks who live in poor communities. It makes me wonder how the mass incarceration of black males in society is so extreme, because of the poor communities many lived in. ... Is it ironic that a black m...

• Word Count: 1433
• Approx Pages: 6
• Grade Level: High School

It was later adopted by many young black fans of rap and hip-hop, the word had been used by black comedians, like Chris Rock and Eddie Murphy and movies about urban culture. ... Plaskett stated, "You see, I"m a Southerner and the word offends me," she says, "Because when I was growing up it was a very hateful, very hurtful word. ... So I would like to never hear the word again." ... The Civil Rights Era in America was about Black people who struggling in all levels not to be called or treated like "niggas." Blacks fought to be treated like human beings with an equal rights for freedom, justice...

• Word Count: 1650
• Approx Pages: 7
• Has Bibliography
• Grade Level: Undergraduate

As long as people remained ignorant about the realities of slavery, they were not motivated to action, but stories like Jacobs' showed the need for reform. "Pity me, and pardon me, O virtuous reader! ... She wanted her readers to understand the perils of enslavement, and try to relate to what it feels like to be owned by another human being. ... "The rich inheritance of justice, liberty, prosperity, and independence bequeathed by your fathers is shared by you, not by me....This Fourth of July is yours not mine.... He used the Biblical reference of the enslaved Israelites and com...

• Word Count: 1369
• Approx Pages: 5
• Grade Level: Undergraduate

They paint a vivid picture of what life was like for black men, women and children at the time. ... He stresses the idea that black slavery was "an economic phenomenon. ... Blacks, on the other hand were bought for life. ... Like in many narratives Mary Prince told of her separation from her family, "we had not the sad satisfaction of being partners in bondage" (in The Classic Slave Narratives 1987: 191), and of the cruelty of her masters, "to strip me naked - to hang me up by the wrists and lay my flesh open with the cow-skin, was an ordinary punishment for even a slight offence" (1987: 194)....

• Word Count: 1309
• Approx Pages: 5
• Has Bibliography

He mentions that "[a] want of information concerning my own was a source of unhappiness to me"(Douglass 310). ... Jacobs would have liked to believe that the bond of gender was stronger than the racial differences, so she tried to evoke agency among the white women of the South by asserting that while they remain inactive, they participate in the enslavement of themselves. ... It rekindled the few expiring embers of freedom, and revived within me a sense of my own manhood. It recalled the departed self-confidence, and inspired me again with a determination to be free"(Douglass 343). In the fi...

• Word Count: 1523
• Approx Pages: 6
• Has Bibliography
• Grade Level: Undergraduate

This statement did not always hold quite as true, as most people would like to believe. ... She tried to resist her beating, like many slaves did, and was punished twice as hard for it. ... The free black man was still living an oppressed life. ... There was only one vacant seat next to me, and people passed it with a disdainful look. A circumstance occurred which gave me an elevated position at once. ...

• Word Count: 1689
• Approx Pages: 7
• Has Bibliography
• Grade Level: High School

Clasp me closer to your bosom Ere I calmly sleep in death; When your arms are enfolded around me I would yield my parting breath. ... Every word he spoke was like music around her heart. ... "Bury Me in a Free Land" Make me a grave where"er you will, In a lowly plain or a lofty hill; Make it among earth's humblest graves, But not in a land where men are slaves. ... I could not rest, if I saw the lash Drinking her blood at each fearful gash; And I saw her babes torn from her breast, Like trembling doves from their parent nest. ... The poem Bury Me In a Free Land deals w...

• Word Count: 2134
• Approx Pages: 9
• Has Bibliography
• Grade Level: High School

Examining the role that religion played in the African-American community, primarily pre-civil war, can be a difficult task due to the limited amount of evidence available.1 While it is a common notion that slavery life was embedded with Christian ideals, a Christian-like ideology is likely more accurate.2 Syncretism occurred with the combining of African tradition and Christian principles to create an African-American spirituality specific to its people. ... Relying mainly on emotion and charisma, black preachers could speak confidently to their peers even with their limited knowledge of t...

• Word Count: 1954
• Approx Pages: 8
• Has Bibliography
• Grade Level: Undergraduate

This was the general accepted view of black people in this society. ... He bellows, "But when they told me that there was a State in this country where they'd let that nigger vote, I drawed out. ... Huck's father gives the reader strong insight as to what it was like back in the early nineteenth century before blacks were freed. ... Huck felt that Jim's escape was wrong, but kept his promise of secrecy, like any good friend would. ... To Huck, Jim was speaking like a white man, not like someone's property, a slave. ...

• Word Count: 2378
• Approx Pages: 10
• Has Bibliography
• Grade Level: High School

Like most slaves of the day, Frederick Douglass did not have close ties to his family. ... In 1838 Douglass tried again and successfully escaped to New York City posing as a black sailor, he explained, "A new world had opened upon me"1. Fredrick could then continue to fight for black freedom and civil rights. ... This newspaper finally gave the black people of America a voice. Douglass acted as an interpreter for the entire black community and necessitated black civil rights through his newspaper. ...

• Word Count: 1350
• Approx Pages: 5
• Grade Level: Undergraduate

"Being continually beaten, and almost famish'd; so inhuman are the Blacks to one another," this production causes the Africans to change into a culture that treats each other like products which creates a slave nature of inhumane commodity. ... "They give in exchange slaves whom the Arabs bring from the land of the Blacks, and gold tiber. ... A negroe in the West Indies informed me, that after having been employed in kidnapping others, he had experienced this reverse. And he assured me, that it was a common incident among his countrymen.... "They are carried like sheep...

• Word Count: 1507
• Approx Pages: 6
• Grade Level: Undergraduate

"(159) Through these bonds, the black community was able to provide comfort and support to one another in the face of daily horrors. The purpose for Harriet Jacobs' "Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl," is not to emphasize the brutality committed against the black community, but to commemorate the unity among African American's. ... "I can testify, from my own experience and observation, that slavery is a curse to the whites as well as it is to the blacks. ... "Her mistress stood by, and mocked at her like an incarnate fiend. ... "Pity me, and pardon me, O virtuous reader! ...

• Word Count: 1272
• Approx Pages: 5
• Grade Level: High School

If they were slaves in the Northern States like New England States, they were freed soon after the war ended. ... Blacks in the North were separated from their white counter parts but Blacks in the South were not free. ... Southern blacks were also considered as property. ... Thus, new groups of black transformed in the South. ... This paper allows me to understand the transition to abolish the slavery and the contradiction in the Americans' rhetoric about slavery throug...

• Word Count: 1901
• Approx Pages: 8
• Has Bibliography

Section 1: Question 2 Slave narratives such as The Narrative life of Frederick Douglass and Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl help readers try to experience and understand what life was like as a slave. ... Education was very specific to white culture and widely denied to Blacks in America. ... I have often wished myself a beast It was this everlasting thinking of my condition that tormented me" (Douglass, 53). ... They are both placed in intermediary stages where they are too white for the Blacks and to Black for the whites. ... Harriet Jacobs made it clear that in the case of black w...

• Word Count: 1740
• Approx Pages: 7
• Grade Level: Undergraduate

By birth a black man, but presumed to be sired by his mother's owner, Douglass grew up to show a natural gift of silver-tongued oratory (Douglass 1846). ... "Like so many pigs" Douglass said. ... My means of escape were provided for me by the very men who were making laws to hold and bind me more securely in slavery" (Douglass 1881). ... Douglass, in the car designated for black persons, described himself as nervous but projecting outward calmness when the conductor came into "the Negro car to collect tickets and examine the papers of his black passengers (Douglass 1881). ... "To which I ...

• Word Count: 1950
• Approx Pages: 8
• Has Bibliography
• Grade Level: High School

The first parts of the caricature that I noticed were the humungous teeth and the micro-sized ears he gave me. I knew that I had big teeth and small ears, but I looked nothing like this. ... Jezebel permitted the sexualized abuse of black woman as chattel slavery, but mammy, re-proportioned them into the ideology of white culture, as it humanized slavery. ... Many white southern authors use the name Mammy when referring to a black woman who would serve white families as a nanny and would commonly overlook childcare. ... A male Mammy is an African American man that dresses up to look like a...

• Word Count: 2170
• Approx Pages: 9
• Has Bibliography
• Grade Level: High School

In one of her most popular poems, "On Beings Brought from Africa to America," Wheatley writes 'Twas mercy brought me from my Pagan land, Taught me benighted soul to understand That there's a god, that there's a savior too: Once I redemption neither sought nor knew Some view our sable race with scornful eye, "Their color is a diabolic die." Remember Christians, Negroes, black as Cain, Maybe refin'd and join th' angelic train. ... Finding God in her life was like turning on a light switch for Phillis Wheatley. ... In addition, the discourse acce...

• Word Count: 2218
• Approx Pages: 9
• Has Bibliography
• Grade Level: High School

Frederick Douglass was the most important black American leader of the 19th century. ... However, the prefaces also implicitly place black narratives under the control of white editors. ... It is like Douglass is saying "I exist" this is my name this is how I look like and here you have a document which proves it. ... Douglas described his early self to live like a pig, a property having no right to his own person. ... At that specific moment Douglas undergoes a kind of epiphany, when he said I quote "I now understood what had been to me a most perplexing difficulty - to wit, the w...

• Word Count: 2277
• Approx Pages: 9
• Grade Level: Undergraduate

If each slave was counted as a full person the south would have benefitted greatly, but instead they were stuck on the evil idea that African-Americans could not be considered a person like a white man. ... After researching this it is clear to me that the evil lies in a persons hesitance to speak out against the majority unless they stand to benefit. ... After being brainwashed into believing African-Americans were property, many whites were not ready to allow blacks to be completely equal. ... Gordon-Reed is trying to get at the idea that whites are considered to be more trustful than blacks...

• Word Count: 1706
• Approx Pages: 7
• Has Bibliography
• Grade Level: Undergraduate