Comparison between 21th Century and 1800s

Slavery today in the 21th century has been abolished by the thirteen amendments, but it does not mean everyone gets along and is treated with respect by every other races. There are still many African Americans who get bad treatment from many other races in many different ways.  For example; there are a lot of African Americans who get discriminated from job opportunities, places, education and many other things. There are laws that have been created to protect African Americans from this treatment but there are still a lot of people who cannot be persuaded to give respect to African Americans. There are many people who still have the state of mind from the 1800s. Where they think that African Americans are low, not apart or humans, that they should still be equal to slavery etc. back in the 1800s African Americans didn’t have the rights to read, write, or learn in general, they didn’t have the rights to vote or become anything in life, now in the 21th century there is an African American president, everyone can vote by the age of eighteen, and everyone is entitled to a free public education. For the most part, in the 21th century, slavery is abolished. African Americans are free. They have the same rights as other people.

Harriet Tubman

Harriet Tubman was a slaver born in 1820 or 1821. It is not exactly known because she is a slave and most slave owners do not keep records of their slave’s birthdates. She was born in Buck town, Maryland. At age 5, she was sent to work in another plantation but was sent back because she was too sick to work. Once she recovered from her sickness, she was sent to another plantation to work as a nurse to the planter’s infant child. At age 12, she worked plowing and hauling wood as a field hand. Harriet married a man name john Tubman at the age of 25 in 1844. He was a freeman.  Harriet always wanted to be free. She told john that she wanted to be free just like him and he stated that she will never be free and if she tried to run he would turn her in. Harriet was lucky because her owners gave her permission to marry john and allowed her to live in a cabin with him.

Harriet was known as “mosses” to many slaves because she led over 300 blacks from the south (slavery) to the north (freedom). In 1849, after her master died and heard a rumor that two of her brothers had been sold to a chain gang that she run away from the plantation in the middle of the night and used the north start to free land in Pennsylvania.  Her other brothers had left with her that night but returned to the plantation because they were too scared. Her ambition was to help her family and friends win freedom as well.

Resources:

Information: http://www.lkwdpl.org/wihohio/tubm-har.htm (Women in History: Living Vignettes of Notable Women Form U.S. history)

Picture 1: http://gardenofpraise.com/images/tubman2.jpg (This is a picture or Harriet Tubman herself)

Picture 2: http://www.vanderbilt.edu/virtualschool/images/harriettubman.jpg ( This is a picture of Harriet getting throw the underground railroad)

Clothing And Food

            Clothing and food that people wear and eat can determine a lot of things about a person. For example; style, culture, likes, dislike, etc. During the 1800s clothing helps some people determine where a slave is from (town slave or rural slave). Rural slaves wore a boorish cloth which was called “negro cloth” or “negro brogans” and these clothing’s were mended and re-mended. Town slaves had better clothes and even another traditional set for Sundays. City slaves dressed in broadcloth suits, blue coats, bright buttons, and gold chains. For a slave to be well-dressed and have good posture it meant that his master had good taste.

            Like with clothing the town’s slaves got fed more elegantly then people in the rural areas. This was because many slaves ate from there masters kitchen. Mostly any slave who ate in the town was fed better than the slaves that were servants in a country house and even better than slaves that worked in the field. Slaves that worked for larger corporate owners were fed by them because they bought large volumes of food. With the law making corporate owners give workers basic food, meat, bread, rice, vegetables, there were more slaves working. This food order also showed many people why plantation slaves were less healthy than other kind of slaves.

Resources:

Information: http://www.tngenweb.org/campbell/hist-bogan/antebellumSlavery.html (History of Campbell County Tennessee: Antebellum Slavery)

Picture 1: https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEghOWPKWLh6cXKs_15GXd81drgX0nn8EZ0r4VptpKobZzESWtbrozq7EbcyAQQUpC_Lsgy4JedzEvpUORF_LHjbDToCmaadH-buZZorMOi7wmwPmZR3DoNZPtKg2rYaaPWrNr-sOHr85YQ/s400/slaves4.jpg (in this picture you see the female slaves clothing look a little worst than male slaves)

Picture 2: http://www.sonofthesouth.net/slavery/photographs/slaves.jpg (in this picture you see that most of the kids do not have shoes and that there clothes are not clean)

Marriage For Slaves?

Being married to one another is a beautiful thing which could create other wonderful things in a person’s life, such as having a family. During the time of the slaves, being married had more down views than up views. Marriage was not an official guarantee. Most black slaves could not legally get married and if they did it was considered a major civil rights violation. When wanting to get married many effects were to come about for slaves. If they had a house it still did not equal to a home. Married couple would get a marriage contract which was as good as nothing. If master moved, not all of the family went with him, which meant that family could and would be sold. Husband and wives mostly belonged to different families, which meant working separately and eating separately. Marriages didn’t make a husband feel like the head of the family, if anything it made the master more in charge and owner of more, such as the wife and any kids they had belong to the masters wife. Husband would have to serve their master before serving their own family. It was very hard for the couple to find their own time for each other and children had no formal family life.

Resources:

Information: http://www.tngenweb.org/campbell/hist-bogan/antebellumSlavery.html (History of Campbell County Tennessee- Antebellum Salvery)

Picture 1: http://faculty.umf.maine.edu/walter.sargent/public.www/web%20103/Broomstick%20marriage.jpg (This picture shows two African American slaves getting married)

Picture 2: http://historymatters.gmu.edu/mpimages/mp091.jpg (This picture also shows to slaves getting married)

Abuse and punishments towards slaves!

Slaves in the 1800s were called property which cost a lot of money. Because they cost so much and they were considered “property” owners felt that they had the rights to give them punishments for anything they felt was wrong of them doing. The idea of slave punishments started in England.  Most slave owners didn’t believe that their punishments were harsh or mean. Others, very little smart slave owners who were nice to the slaves they bought because they knew that cruel punishment would lead to slaves running away and it would take more time and effort to get the slaves back. They also knew that if the slaves were to run away, their plantation wouldn’t grow because the lack of work done, which meant less money and less slaves to be bought. The punishment for not doing the right thing or doing something improper was either whips ranged from 50 to 100 lashes, branding, drowned, put in stocks, slapped, kicked, tarred and feathered, and/or tied up. Punishment for run away slaves would be to be chased by dogs. If they were caught they would be hit with paddles or whips, or their body part would be cut off, mostly their ear. Even thought these punishments can get really bad most slaves believe that the worst abuse is being sold away from the family.

Resourse:

Information:

http://library.thinkquest.org/5643/sppe.htm  (ThinkQuest: project by students for students)

Picture 1:

http://8crwlsv.pbworks.com/f/slave-punishment-1.jpg (slave being whipped by his owner as punishment)

Picture 2:

http://webspace.webring.com/people/lp/pillory/slave.jpg (slave about to be killed as a punishment)

More About Women slaves!

The first female slave was in Georgia. It has been shown that female slaves had a much difficult time than male slaves. They are apposed to more burdens and challenges. For example physical, sexual, and very cruel emotional abuse form their owners and other male slaves. At the young age females jobs are told to play with other kids and did easy work that was given to them. At age 10 young girls were trained to nonagricultural labor in domestic settings or put in the fields with the older slaves. If they were put in the fields they were in the fields by five in the morning, and in the evening they worked as late as nine in the summer and seven in the winter. They prepared fields, planted seeds, cleaned ditches, hoed, plowed, picked cotton, and cut and tied rice stalks. Slave women also cleaned, packaged, and prepared the crops for shipment. Some slave owners mainly believed that female slaves picked more cotton then male slaves. If a female slave got to work in the house, they house had to dressing their owners, combing their hair, sewing their clothing or blankets, nursing their infants, and preparing their meals and were on duty 24 hours a day. As a female slave got older they had access to more jobs, such as, washerwomen, wet nurses, cooks, hairdressers, midwives, servants to the children, and house wenches but most worked in cotton field. When a female slave was put up for sale advertisements would be put in newspapers and were wrote with revealing descriptions of the women For example; Stout and tall, about 30 years old, speaks no English, has her country marks upon her body, had on when she went away white negroe cloth cloaths. —Whoever takes her up, or can give any intelligence of her to the subscriber, so that he may have her, shall have 20s. reward. —There is a great reason to think the Indians have carried her off.

Resources:

Information:

http://www.georgiaencyclopedia.org/nge/Article.jsp?id=h-841 (The New Georgia Encyclopedia: History and Archaeology)

Picture 1:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/british/abolition/images/the_abolitionists_gallery_04.jpg  (female slave being sold by white man and child is being separated from mother)

Picture 2:

http://threadforthought.net/wp-content/uploads/2010/08/Slaves-being-sold-at-Public-Auction.jpgn   (slave being sold by a white man.)

Ser Nat Turner: a memorable slave!

Nat Turner was born into slavery. He was born on October 2, 1800. He was from Southampton County, Virginia. Nat was very intelligent and spiritual. In 1821, Nat Turner ran away but returned thirty days later because he believed he was set with a vision. His master died a year after that, who then sold him to Ms. Thomas Moore. Three years later Nat Turner believed to have another vision. Then, another on May 2, 1828. In the beginning of 1830, his new owner was a young child named Putnum Moore, the child of Thomas Moore and her new husband Joseph Travis. In February, 1831 Nat started to create a plan with his four friends, Henry, Hark, Nelson, and Sam because he believed that there was a sign in a eclipse that occurred that day. Nat soon became ill which made the plan postpone. On August 21, 1831 Nat and six of his friends decided to kill everyone in Travis’ household at two in the morning while they were asleep, then they would continue from house to house and kill all the other white people. He felt that the sign was that on August 13 there was an atmospheric disturbance in which the sun appeared bluish-green. Nat had more the forty slaves that joined him to kill these people. Nat Turner used Travis’ farm as a hid out place but on October 30 he was discovered, captured and taken to county jail. On November 5^th he was sentenced to execution back at his home town court. On November 11^th Nat Turner was hung and skinned.

            Because fifty-five   people were executed, many more were banished and about 200 innocent black people were killed by a mob of white people, Virginia stated decided to abolish slavery, free the slaves and give more support and rights to black people. I believe we can say thank you to Nat Turner in some form of way.

Resources:

information:

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh

/aia/part3/3p1518.html

 picture 1: http://mikeely.files.wordpress.com/2007/12/nat_turner3.jpg 

picture 2: http://teachingamericanhistorymd.net/000001/000000/000146/images/rebellion.jpg

 - africans in america, resource bank